Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Godrej Consumer Products Limited Q2 FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vishal Kedia. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Good evening. Welcome everyone to the investor con call for Godrej Consumer Products. I'm Vishal, from the management team. Firstly, we apologize for the delay in the upload of the result. This was due to a technical glitch at our end. On today's call, we have Sudhir and Aasif. We will start with opening remarks from Sudhir, following which we will go into Q&A. I now hand over to Sudhir for his opening remarks. Thanks, Vishal. Good evening to you all. I hope you and your families had a safe and happy Diwali. Q2 FY 2026 has been a resilient quarter for Godrej Consumer Products Limited, given the transition of GST in India and the continued macroeconomic challenges in Indonesia. Despite these headwinds, our India business, excluding soaps, has delivered double-digit underlying volume growth, reflecting the strength of our core portfolio and execution. Our international portfolio faced macro and competitive pressures in Indonesia, which were offset by robust performance in Africa. On a consolidated basis, our revenue grew 4% in INR terms, supported by 3% underlying volume growth. Our EBITDA margin stood at 19.3%, and net profit before exceptionals declined by 2%. In India, sales grew by 4% and volumes by 3%. The recent GST rate reduction is a welcome structural reform that will strengthen long-term consumer demand. However, this transition led to short-term trade disruptions as the channel adjusted to new pricing and cleared old inventory, particularly impacting Soaps and Hair Color. Despite this, we continue to gain market share in Soaps and other key categories. In Home Care, we delivered 6% growth, led by strong performance in Air Fresheners and Fabric Care. Personal Care declined by 2%, largely reflecting the GST-related impact on soaps. As guided earlier, this was the last weak quarter for margins, and we expect a return to normative levels in the first second half of FY 2026 for India. Across our portfolio, we are performing well and gaining traction. Godrej Fab and Goodknight Agarbatti are now among the leading players in their categories and continue to strengthen their market positions. Aer Plug, Amazon Woods 4X, and Karmasutra 99 Rupees have all met or exceeded launch expectations and are now being scaled up. In October, we also entered the Toilet Cleaning category, a close to INR 3,000 crore segment, growing at strong double digits. Our new brand, Godrej Spic, has been launched in select South Indian states, priced competitively at INR 59 for 500 ml, marking an important step in expanding our Home Care portfolio. Our Indonesia business continues to face macro and micro pricing pressures but delivered a stable UVG of 2% with market share gains across all key categories. Revenue growth remained negative due to ongoing pricing challenges at -7%. This includes an impact of change in distributor arrangement, contributing - 4%, where what was accounted for costs is now being removed from top line. In contrast, Africa, USA, and the Middle East delivered 25% sales growth in INR terms and 15% in constant currency, and EBITDA growth of 20%, led by Hair Fashion and Air Fresheners. The launch of Aer Plug has seen strong consumer response across these markets. As shared during our investor meet, we expect our performance to strengthen sequentially through FY 2026, with the second half delivering a stronger trajectory than the first. Demand trends are improving, and we remain confident of achieving high single-digit underlying volume growth in our standalone business and high single-digit revenue growth at a consolidated level. On profitability, our India standalone and GAUM businesses are expected to deliver double-digit EBITDA growth for the full year. We faced unanticipated macroeconomic headwinds in both Indonesia and Latin America. Given the temporary pressures in these international markets, consolidated EBITDA growth may be marginally lower. Nevertheless, we remain firmly confident in our strategy, the resilience of our portfolio, and the strength of our brands. With disciplined execution and continued focus on innovation and operational excellence, we are well positioned to deliver sustainable and profitable growth in the periods ahead. I'm also pleased to announce that we have signed a definitive agreement to acquire the FMCG business under the Muuchstac brand, one of India's fastest-growing men's grooming brands and a leader in the men's face wash space. Muuchstac has delivered roughly INR 80 crore of revenue over the last 12 months and is already among the top two brands online and top three overall in men's face wash. The total face wash market at around INR 6,000 crore-INR 7,000 crore is growing at 15% - 20%. While the men's segment, about INR 1,000 crore, is growing over 25% annually, driven by consumers upgrading from soaps to face wash. We expect this upgradation trend to continue, making face wash a structurally high-growth category. Muuchstac is a highly profitable business, delivering close to INR 30 crore of EBITDA adjusted for one-offs in the last 12 months. We have acquired the brand at an attractive valuation, roughly 4x of sales and 10x of EBITDA, which is significantly below market benchmark transactions. This acquisition strengthens our presence in personal care and positions us well to capture the accelerating shift towards men's grooming. Thank you very much, and I look forward to questions. Thank you very much. Thanks. We will now begin with the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and then one on their touch-tone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Again, to register for a question, please press star and then one. Our first question comes from the line of Mihir Shah from Nomura. Please go ahead. Hi, Sudhir and team. Thank you for taking my question. Firstly, again. Hi. Hi. Firstly, on the margin guidance that you've called out, palm has gone through some volatile times. You reiterated that you will come back to your normative standalone band. I believe it is 24% - 26%. Just checking on that once again. Do you think that 3Q, 4Q will be around these levels, or with the higher palm oil prices that we've seen, there is a risk to that? I just wanted to check on that one first. No, I don't. I mean, when we said normative, that is what it is, and it may be around normative, maybe on the slightly lower end of normative. Palm prices have been a bit volatile, but they've been range-bound between INR 4,000 crore and INR 4,500 crore. In fact, in the last three or four days, there was a very sharp fall as well. It does seem to be range-bound between INR 4,000 crore and INR 4,500 crore. Last quarter was the kind of last quarter that we had to price for this. Last year, Palm, we were based INR 3,600 crore, INR 3,700 crore. I would say that Palm has relatively been stable. There have been some ups and downs in and out. Right now, for example, we are roughly priced for this Palm now. Got it. That's clear. Thanks for that. Secondly, on Indonesia, how should we think about Indonesia now? While your volume seems to have been coming back, and so has the market share, margin pressures and the price cuts, should one expect this to continue as the competitive intensity would have sustained for some time? What is the new normal that one should think about the revenue construct and margin construct for Indonesia? I think I was just back from Indonesia two weeks ago, and I think that there is a genuine kind of slowdown in the economy. I think the government is aware of it, and they're taking appropriate action. Maybe for the next few quarters, our volume growth may be in this 2% - 4% range. As I told you, in terms of NSV, about 4% of it is actually a restructuring of an agreement between distributors. Some of it, and the margins and the rest of it, is due to pricing pressure. Some of it will come off. My own impression is that what happened in Indonesia is three quarters ago, the market very sharply slowed down. To respond to it, there was a lot of price competition, both by retailers and by companies. That seems to have eased off a little bit. It goes up and down. I think there'll be a little bit of improvement in delivery in Indonesia in the second half. I would say for us to go back to 4.5 volume, it may take a little bit more time. We'll let you know when we see that. We should be in this low single-digit volume range. Got it. On Africa, there are some volume margins that are getting back to around 14% levels, I believe, and very strong growth out there, making up for whatever you've missed out on the other businesses in international. Is there a one-off in this? Can one expect continuity of this performance or maybe going back to what it was growing at historically? Africa also, if you just can share the revenue and margin construct. Yeah. See, I think of this 25% revenue growth, about 10% is positive currency, which is a relatively rare occurrence for us. 15% is the constant currency growth. If it's a little high, it's lapping relatively low bases. It may come down to high single-digit kind of revenue growth we are hoping. If we don't continue at this 25% revenue growth, margins should be in this mid-teens. It's a good margin for us to run the Africa business. If in the medium term, we can run a mid-teens EBITDA business, kind of a high single-digit, if a constant currency business, or maybe even touching a double-digit constant currency, in that kind of range and the currency moves up and down. I would say that's probably what we should expect. Understood. I was asking because we were expecting Africa margins to remain at around those mid-teens level, but they had moderated down. You highlighted that investments will continue, so it can stay there. You, again, going back to those, just wanted to confirm. Yeah, I think last quarter, we had one or two one-offs. I think this mid-teens, I mean, look, we have to, there's a caveat here, which is there's a structural volatility in Africa. It won't be the range of this mid-teens, may be a pretty wide range. This is where we should kind of, it's a good business if we can be at mid-teens here. Got it. Last bookkeeping question. Any one-offs in the employee cost? Are there? You would highlight that you would see some savings from ad spends, about 200 basis points, because of the media changes that you've done. That continues, right, both of these? That's all from my side. Thank you for the question. Yeah. Hi, hi. After [P.M.], I think the first one in terms of employee cost, nothing unusual in terms of right back, etc. It is regular two-ups, which we kind of keep doing from time to time. Yeah. That's where on employee cost. In terms of media savings, we kind of worked through a couple of levers to ensure that this year the overall ATLs will be lower, ensuring that the same effectiveness is delivered. We are on track on the larger projects. Spends are a function within that from a quarter perspective in terms of various activities. We seem to be on track in terms of delivering all the efficiencies which we set out to deliver. Got it. Thank you very much. We should get more or less the savings which we've spoken about. 200 basis points. Got it. Got it. Thanks, Aasif and Sudhir, wishing you all the very best. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Abneesh Roy from Nuvama. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks and hi, hi. Thanks and congrats on the Muuchstac acquisition. Legacy companies have been acquiring D2C, good to see, Godrej do that. My specific question is, male grooming always looks attractive. 5 years also back, it was attractive. In the last 5 years, we haven't seen much scale-up of any brand or any kind of category. What is the thought process here? Why this brand? Why male grooming? No, no. I think, Abneesh, just I think firstly, male grooming is a bit of a misnomer. Face wash brand, 95% of their revenue is one single SKU in male face wash. We're grooming, but it's really a men's face wash brand. Within male grooming, face wash is a category which is very allied to soaps. Soaps is upgrading into body wash, hand wash, and face wash. This is where soaps is moving. We've got a strong play in hand wash and increasingly strong play in body wash. Now we've got an entry into face wash. We're entering through the male market with the number two online and number three overall brand, which has roughly got a 10% share of male face wash and growing rapidly. I would look at this through the lens of face wash and not through the lens of male grooming. Understood. A specific question was, what is the positioning here versus your current face wash offerings? How does this gel in terms of, say, pricing positioning? Any synergy benefit long term you would see versus, say, Kirana outlets and on your own e-commerce business? What would be your synergy benefit? Yeah. Look, we don't have a face wash today. This brand is positioned largely on anti-acne. It operates. One of the really interesting things about Muuchstac, of revenue, they make INR 30 crore of EBITDA, which at least we see a lot of D2C brands, that was quite unique about Muuchstac. One of the reasons for it is they have a pretty unique influencer model. I think GCPL can certainly learn a lot from Muuchstac on influencer models. I think Muuchstac is also unique that most of its sales comes from customers. There's an opportunity for us to expand distribution both online and offline. A lot of it comes from tier two and tier three cities. In tier two and tier three cities with our distribution, because that seems to be, I think Muuchstac is operating at about 70, 75 RPI to the market leader. There's an opportunity for us to distribute it widely in tier two and tier three towns as well. Your second quick question, mosquito repellent, you were getting more confident, and Q1 was a good quarter. Q2 season was not that favorable. If you could talk about new formulation intrinsically, how you think it's doing. Second, H2, it's supposed to be harsh winter because of La Niña. Anything harsh is not good for mosquito. Against that, what will be the outlook on household insecticides in terms of the H2 growth? I think the first thing on household insecticides is on every single segment within household insecticide where we've got the new molecule, we are continuing to gain market share. I think you are right about the fact that Q1 was a good season and Q2 has been a poor season. Q3, I don't know. I've also heard La Niña, though, of course. It is the transition from autumn to winter when really mosquito season happens, which is now. It depends a little bit on how long the season is. In any case, second half of December and January, we don't sell too much mosquito products in the north. It's really hard to predict what will happen in terms of season. Typically, you have one good and one bad season. It's possible what you say that Q3, I've also been reading La Niña and higher temperatures. It's difficult for me to predict that. I think the important thing for us is to ask a very simple question, which is, are we growing competitively and are we spreading the season? We have a measure called spreading the season, which is our volume growth versus the seasonality here, which we have two, three ways of measuring the seasonality index. Are we doing better than the season? On both counts, I think the answer is yes. Last question on body wash soaps. Versus the market leader, if you could tell us in Q1, Q2, how was the gap and when would you expect to grow faster than the market leader? PFAD specifically, Sudhir, palm oil you did discuss, but ultimately PFAD, I think, is more relevant. We understand that because of all this tariff issue, global tariff issue, etc., or whatever reason, we haven't seen much correction. If you could comment how relevant is that from your margins perspective in H2? I think the two, three questions. Abneesh, do you mean soaps or do you mean body wash in your first question? Soaps only. Sorry, soaps. Soaps, because when we say body wash, we mean liquid. So in soaps, I mean. Market leader calls both similar. Sorry. Okay. Fine. Fair enough. In soaps, we have continued to gain market share in this quarter, and we are quite happy with our market share gains, in particular volume share. Sorry. Let us ignore the official market share data. From your understanding, and you can easily make out what is their growth rate. What will be the gap in Q1, Q2, and when do you see you growing faster than them? Let's ignore the market share for now. That is not proper for me to answer, Abneesh, on individual competitors. I think we have to ask, do we believe we're growing faster than the market, and do we believe we will continue to grow faster than the market? I feel that we have grown slightly. See, it's also very hard to read Q2, Abneesh, because there's really been on soaps a lot of chaos in terms of pipeline. Hard to look at October, September. I would say that in soaps, we feel that like in the long term, we continue to outperform the market, and we will continue to outperform the market as we go forward. The market growth is what it is. For the next four quarters, I am anticipating pretty sharp volume growth in soaps. And PFAD? On your question on PFAD, you are right about the fact that international PFAD prices haven't corrected. Domestic PFAD prices, because of this duty reduction in crude versus refined palm oil, mean a lot more crude palm oil is coming into India, and that is getting refined here, and PFAD is being generated in India. Domestic PFAD is actually quite attractively priced. Overall, it's not international PFAD that matters, but domestic PFAD, and that is quite attractively priced relative to, I mean, it's priced in the right ratios. Sure. Thanks. That's all from my side. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nihal Mahesh Jham from HSBC. Please go ahead. Hi, Sudhir. Good evening. Two questions. One is, is it generally possible to call out the impact of GST on the overall standalone top line? It's something that some of the other companies have also tried calling out. I think it will be 3%- 4%. Sure. That is helpful. Sudhir, the second question is, I think when the Raymond acquisition also happened, we had discussed about the fact that Cinthol, obviously, is not something that could enter into deodorants, and Park Avenue obviously had its own standing in the category. Similarly, when I look at Muuchstac also, I'm guessing maybe there was a possibility of trying to extend Cinthol, but we've obviously chosen to obviously acquire a brand. I wanted to understand which are the other whitespace categories that we are looking at potentially, evaluating, and is, say, an acquisition a preferred route rather than a brand extension for some of our existing names? No, I think a vicious mix of launching, extending brands, launching new brands organically, and doing acquisitions. Let me give you an example. We just recently extended Park Avenue into a deo lotion in Tamil Nadu, which is a kind of an antiperspirant. Equally, we launched two new brands ourselves, Godrej Spic and Godrej Block, in toilet cleaners and antiperspirant categories respectively. Muuchstac and Park Avenue are examples of inorganic. I guess we have to ask some basic questions between organic and inorganic. If the market has three to four players, it's a little bit overbaked, then it is better to buy out, and if you get an attractive valuation. Firstly, the category has to be attractive, whether it's organic or inorganic. It has to have a long runway of growth, ideally low penetration, good margin structures. That's the first question on entering new categories. We are kind of one of the things you can see is like laundry and now toilet cleaner, we are kind of attempting antiperspirants or attempting many new categories, pet care, etc. The second question on organic versus inorganic is largely to do with the competitive intensity of the category and the availability of an asset at the right price. Men's face wash has three, four brands. This one is the number three brand and very good margin profile. We thought it was an attractive valuation, so we went for it. Point taken. Just one final question on HI. We've obviously spoken about the benefit of the new molecule. If it's possible for you to call out the market share gain that we've seen since the launch, both for LVs and [Coils] and also the current ballpark scale of the incense sticks, which was, I think, an INR 100 crore number you had mentioned during the announcement. See, we don't specifically give out these numbers, but let me just say that our share gains in electrics on already very high shares is pretty significant. In coils, on reasonably high shares is reasonable. On incense sticks, it is very high. We have now become the market leader in incense sticks, and we are growing at roughly 100% on incense sticks. That is helpful, Sudhir. Wish you all the best. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Arnab Mitra from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, Sudhir. First question was on the GST-related restocking. Do you expect the trade pipelines to normalize within the December quarter from wherever they were before the GST transition? The related question is, when we talk about high single-digit volume growth for the full year, we are effectively talking about a double-digit plus in the second half. Is that delta largely going to come from soaps, according to you, where you've had a negative high single-digit base? You You may have a strong growth going ahead, or are you seeing other areas where these are also accelerating? Actually, Arnab, if you look at the last four quarters, our volume growth, X of soaps, has been kind of double-digit only, in fact, including this quarter, despite all the GST transitions. Soaps has been pretty sharply negative, as you can calculate. That will almost certainly turn around. Quarters to, I mean, I can't predict exactly what it will be, but I'll be surprised if that's not high single digits. Between the two, we should kind of be in the high single-digit, double-digit volume trajectory in India. I mean, our volume growth in India, I think in quarter one was 6%. In quarter two, has been 3%. It's about 4.5%. We may end the year kind of at 7%, 8%. You're right. I hope to be in that range. I mean, hope to have the non-soap momentum continuing and soap being a very significant change. Do you expect the GST restocking to happen within a quarter itself, or could it take more time? I think it will happen within the quarter. Most of it has happened within the month, actually, but certainly everything will happen within the quarter. Understood. Sudhir, the second question was on toilet cleaners entering into the category. Like when you did Godrej Fab, there was obviously a disruption on pricing you did, plus the product technology was slightly different. If you could just help us understand what's different in this product versus the existing, what the market offers, and do you see a similar kind of potential here, or this will be more of a slower ramp-up over the next few years? Yeah. Look, as a philosophy, Arnab, we're looking at a lot of categories. Someone asked the question, when do you buy organically, when do you do inorganically? We do things organically if we believe we have a product. The starting point is not price. The starting point is product, which is a disruptive product. This is a disruptive product, and the proposition of the product, I think Vishal will send you the ad, which is now running in Tamil Nadu, is that it not just cleans, but also prevents stains. It's a formulation that is a distinct formulation. Distinct. It's not a me-too product. It's operating at roughly INR 75 RPI or INR 70 RPI to the market leader, which is roughly where Fab is operating today. It has what we think is pretty clutter-breaking advertising. We are very hopeful that after Fab, this becomes a good growth driver for us. Understood. One last question on household insecticides. I think last quarter, you mentioned one of the things you are still tracking is that overall incense stick share continues to go up in the category. Is that still holding true, or is it plateauing? Any sense on that relative within the category between incense sticks and other formats? Incense sticks growth as a category continues to be high, Arnab, which is one of ours. Not an ideal situation. That continues to be high. That growth doesn't seem to have slowed down. We continue to gain share in a fast-growing category. It would be ideal for us. It will happen at some point. We're also doing various things to try and see how we can slow down incense sticks without slowing ourselves down. I would say that that's not fully a solved problem yet. Sure. Thanks. That's it from my side. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Harit Kapoor from Investec. Please go ahead. Hi, good evening. The first question is just a clarification. The comment in the press that you had on this call on remaining confident of achieving high single-digit underlying volume growth in India is for the full year, right? I mean, it's not just two. That's right. That's right. The second thing was on soaps. As we have seen this GST transition, if you could just help us understand what's the part of the, what percentage of that portfolio have we had to take price cuts, and what percentage of the portfolio will eventually, which is low-unit packs, will eventually see gramage changes? That would just help us gauge what incremental kind of volume you can see in that space. I mean, all grammage packs will see grammage increases. All non-grammage packs will see price cuts. So roughly 2/3, 1/3 ratio. Two-thirds, 1/3 ratio. Okay. The last thing was on. I mean, 2/3 i s large pack and 1/3 grammage, huh, Harit? Of course. I get that. The last thing was on Africa. I think there's already a question here, but I just wanted to understand that this kind of early to mid-teens kind of a number, in the near to medium term, do you see any, apart from obviously season and quarterly volatility in terms of cycling, in terms of base, etc., do you see any negative impact on this in the near term? I'm talking more on currency, on certain countries, on certain other headwinds. Any headwinds in that margin expectation, at least in the next two, three quarters? Hey, hi, Harit. Some of these pieces like currency movements, etc., are difficult to forecast because they happen without kind of, you can't read these signs, and you suddenly kind of get a movement. Hence, it's better to see it more at an annualized level. From a year perspective, we know we'll kind of get margins broadly at those levels. Sudhir also spoke up about guidance in terms of ensuring that GAUM and India will work towards delivering double-digit EBITDA growth for the year. Those are the two pieces which are more robust in terms of guidance. You can have a few months or a quarter where you could see some currency headwind or tailwind, and it's difficult to forecast that. Yeah, broadly, we should try to stay in these ranges. Right. One last, if I may. On India, this quarter the volume value has been fairly close, about 4% and 3%. Is that kind of mix that we expect even going forward, like a very small kind of pricing or whatever else value growth there is? Pretty much revenue growth and volume growth will mirror each other for India business. Is that the way to think about it? Yeah, similar to the previous quarter. Soaps will continue to have UPG, but there are some other parts of the business and mix, etc., which are operating the other way around. I think this is roughly you'll get 1%-1.5% UPG. Got it. Those are my questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. A reminder to all the participants, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and then one. Our next question comes from the line of Karthik Chelappa from Indus Capital Advisors Limited. Please go ahead. Thank you for the opportunity. Just two questions from my side. The first one is, apart from palm oil, what are the other variables or risks that you actually see to your normative margin band in the second half? See, there are three risks in GCPL structurally. One is palm prices. Second is seasonality for household insecticide. Third is currency volatility. I think palm is now pretty much under the bag. I mean, unless even if there's some, it's not, I mean, if anything, it's a little bit softer now. Currency volatility, yeah, I mean, Argentina. Currency volatility looks to be in our favor, lower than before. Household insecticide seasonality, somebody asked the question on. If it's a very cold winter, what happens, I don't know. That is really the only remaining risk at any point in time. Got it. My second question is on Indonesia. Despite the macro being bad and competitive intensity being high and a low UVG and even a negative constant currency growth, the margins have held up pretty well. What would explain that, and how should we think about margins in Indonesia going forward? Part of the margin reason may be Aasif, right? Yeah. I think, firstly, margins are, I would say, improved, but mildly below the normative level. Some of it, when the reclass happens in terms of some cost going through and the price growth goes down, it also kind of gives us a mild boost to margins. That's fairly very mild because it's only around 4% movement between the lines. Margins are within the range, but it's on the lower side of the range. Both in India and India, we've heard a lot of cost savings. Part of it is reclassification, part of it. Some of it has been all of it has been plowed back into pricing. That explains the negative UPG and flat margins. Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much. Wish you and the team all the very best for the rest of the year. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Amit Purohit from Elara. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, Sir. Thank you for the opportunity. On the guidance you highlighted in the end, could you just give some clarification on the consolidated margin? You said marginally be lower EBITDA growth. What does that mean? I mean, are we looking at high single? What I mean to say is that we'll have good EBITDA growth for the full year. We had, at the beginning of the year, guided for double-digit EBITDA growth this year. We had a slight bit of a bump in Q2. Q1 was actually roughly on plan. I think India and Indonesia, India and, sorry, GAUM will roughly be on plan. LatAm certainly looks like a very volatile situation right now, and Indonesia were having some issues. The consolidated number may be a little lower than what we had originally guided at the beginning of the year, but if we have a little bit of luck, not too much lower. Sure. When you say that the GST impact of 3%-4% for the quarter, and we did 3% in volumes, is it a fair way to think that next quarter the stocking up will happen and effectively you will have high single-digit growth in volumes, and plus if the demand improves, then probably a double-digit growth? Is that the way to think, or? I'd be disappointed if we don't come to somewhere near that because some of it has to come from pipeline. Some of it, one hopes the soap trajectory changes. See, roughly, we are running a volume trajectory in India of about 6%. If you kind of remove the noise, including Q2, actually, if you remove the noise, I'm hoping that that underlying number goes to 7%, 8%, at least for the next four quarters with soap. With some pipelines here and there, you may be right about Q3. Maybe in Q4, it may again go back to slightly lower numbers than that. Sure. Just on this Muuchstac acquisition, you talked about the overall size of the market close to about INR 1,000 crore. We are the number three player with an INR 80 crore kind of a run rate, roughly. I just wanted to understand the number one player, what is the share, and is it that segmented or the difference is so huge? This could be a risk with respect to scaling up this brand because after INR 150 crore-INR 200 crore, again, there will be a challenge to scale up this brand. Is that the right way to think, or what am I missing? I mean, look, INR 80 crore is NSV and INR 1,000 crore is MRP. These are slightly different numbers we're looking at. Our market share may be closer to 11%, 12%. Anything over 10% is a, and this is, we are getting double-digit market share being present only in online. Our online share is close to 30%, so it's a 1/3 player, which kind of shows you the strength of the equity. Our job is to expand it nationally, and one or two channels are actually market leaders in Face Wash. It is clearly a kind of expanded, it's clearly got something to it in terms of kind of consumer traction. In most measures, you can go to Flipkart and just check out the reviews on Flipkart. You'll get a sense of the scale of the brand there. What is the share of the number one player in this? We don't usually give out. Even our own shares are only giving it indicatively for this purpose. Sure. Sure. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all the participants. You may press star and then one to ask a question. Our next question comes from the line of Manoj Menon from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, team. Just a few clarifications. One, actually, on the household insecticide business, particularly on the electrics. Now, when I look at top-down, a lot of data I read about electrification improvement. Point number two, you have improved the affordability with the INR 50 crore packs. Point number three, you have improved the efficacy with the launch of the new formulation about 18 months back. Now, I understand that overall, you have done double-digit volume growth, which is a credible performance in the context of the macros, etc. HI, specifically, if I'm to look at the overall growth, is there any other interventions you need for this category to grow faster? No, Manoj. I think the share this was the monsoon. A lot of people have spoken about it. It has been a very different monsoon. Temperatures have been lower. Monsoon has been widespread. This has been a pretty, and see, it's also the largest season of the year. It's a large season. Not the largest is actually coming up now. This has been largely a seasonality hit number on insect sticks. Our spreads are roughly what they've been for the last two, three quarters, a little lower, but roughly what they've been for the few quarters in the past. I just feel like we'll continue to grow household insecticide faster than in the past. There will come a time in which insect sticks slows down and premium grows. We'll try and mediate that as soon as we can, and then we'll have the next level of growth here. Okay. Is it fair to say that the electrics are all growing, let's say, in line with your internal targets, plans, aspirations, etc.? I guess that the rest of the portfolio is growing faster so that it probably doesn't reflect in the overall scheme of things. Yeah. I mean, we're quite happy with the RMF relaunch in Q1. The numbers are very good in electrics. Q2, the numbers have been lower, but higher than the seasonal impact. Q3 grows. I mean, overall, I feel like household insecticides is still over a year period because you must look at household insecticides over a year's period. Our household insecticides business, from being a low single-digit growth business, will probably move to being a kind of a high-ish single-digit growth business. I think that's what the relaunch has done for us over a longer period. Understood. Secondly, on the soap business. Given the benefits from the GST cuts, etc., in the medium term, from a category growth, particularly from your vantage point of view for your brand, because you have the, let's say, market leadership, let's say, with Godrej No. 1 in that particular segment, which is probably more price sensitive across the other segments in soaps. How do we think about beyond the noise of extra grammage in the next few quarters, which honestly, in my opinion, it's not that relevant? Beyond that, how should we think about, let's say, is there an opportunity to, let's say, grow faster with a 2, 3year point of view? I probably think so, Manoj. From my own experience of the past GST, while soaps doesn't have a huge amount of locals, it does have what we call subpops and players below Godrej No. 1. Some of them, I don't know what is the tax compliance and various issues there. Having a 5% GST certainly helps in upgradation from Chhattisgarh players, subpop players. I am a little hopeful that the soaps category will grow a little faster than it's grown in the last few years. I wouldn't care. Sudhit, thank you. The third one is on the Bolton acquisition. I don't know if I'm getting the pronunciation correctly. It's Muuchstac. Could you just talk a little more about the brand? I'll tell you the reason I'm asking this question. I just did a quick poll in my internal group, which is about 100 people in my company. Honestly, I never heard about this brand, actually. I was telling that probably I'm old enough or maybe not young enough to know the brand from an awareness point of view. If you just talk about the brand, explain the rationale and which geographies, which TAM, which they currently address, and where you could take this brand in the medium to long term. Thank you. Okay. One thing, Manoj, rather than asking 100 people in the office, just as I said, look at Flipkart and see the reviews. You'll get, I think, 1,000,000 reviews. That's a lot more than 100. That will give you a sense. I must be honest that when the deal came to me from my head, I had also not heard of Muuchstac. What caught my attention were two things. One is that the category was an attractive category for us because one of the problems with soaps is it's upgrading to liquids, and one of the liquids in which it's upgrading to is face wash. Certainly, to be present in all the upgradations of soaps is strategically important for us being a cleansing business. That immediately caught our eye. Two things caught our eye on Muuchstac. The first was that 90%-95% of their sales came from one SKU, which is always a good thing. It tells you that one SKU has some kind of brand power. The second thing is that they have very unusually high profitability, which again tells you that there's consumer demand. On INR 80 crore of revenue, if you do INR 30 crore of EBITDA, there's something clearly going for you. When we dug deeper, there were a couple of interesting things about the brand. One is that they're a purely influencer-led brand with no performance marketing. That's a really interesting model. Most of the sale comes in tier two and tier three towns, which may answer why we're not using it. A disproportionate number came from small towns. Our growth hypothesis is that the men's face wash category does have long legs. It's expanding beyond the urban towns. Meesho and Flipkart are the big customers for Muuchstac. I think probably a combination, this is one of those things that sounds like GT expansion, rural expansion may actually help this category. It's also a unique product. If you buy it, and I'll get Vishal to send it across to all of you, it's also a uniquely formulated product and has pretty high stickiness among its users. It was a relatively rare DTC brand. I think we've been looking at a lot of DTC brands. It's a relatively rare one and ticks many boxes for us. Understood. Thanks. Do you have the time for a follow-up quickly on this? I have the time. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Just depending on the queue, actually, which you have. Just to zoom in on this brand again. Thanks for the detailed comments on this. Is it like south overindexed, north overindexed? Just some color on which part of, let's say, India, tier two, tier three? Point number two, what is the use case, actually? Or is it just like, let's say, what Himalaya did with the soaps to Face Wash earlier? What exactly is the use case which, let's say, the brand has been solving currently till date? It is a reasonably widespread brand. I think it's slightly bigger relatively in the south, but it is certainly overindexed in tier two and three cities. The proposition of the brand is around anti-acne. When you speak to consumers, and again, you'll be able to read the comments on Flipkart, a lot of it is anti-acne. It's got reasonable polarization, which is a good thing for a brand. A lot of consumers like it. A lot of consumers, it doesn't suit them because it's a pretty unique formulation with a sharp fragrance, a distinct product. Those are really the contours of the brand. Thank you. One very last question or a clarification. In your opinion, in the medium term, do you think this product would, let's say, need to stay online because of the specific influencer-led marketing which it has gone through till date from Indic Incubation? Or is there a GT play as well you see as an upside? You may say that no, you don't want to do that for the time? No, I certainly think that given where it's selling, we must make it available to whichever consumer type is buying it and tier two, tier three consumers. Many, of course, shop online now. Online has gone well beyond tier one. There will be a reasonable GT place. I think even in terms of channels, right now, it's only in two e-commerce. All this business is coming effectively from two customers in e-comm or two and a half, three customers in e-comm. There is scope to expand within e-comm, scope to expand in modern trade, scope to expand in GT. They're only doing influencer marketing. There's certainly scope to see whether conventional marketing works on it. I think there are many kind of vectors. The good thing is, right from day one, this is an EPS-accretive acquisition. It gives us that much breathing space on this. Thank you. Thank you, team. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of [Aasif Petriolla with Jaffe Management Company] Please go ahead. Hi, team. Actually, my previous participant asked the question. It was on the recent acquisition. Just wanted to understand. If we spend on the R&D, is it that difficult to have a brand like Muuchstac built right from scratch in-house than buying a brand which is, according to me, only going to work in tier two and tier three? I don't see any urban user having stickiness to a brand like this. I would like to know your thoughts. What's the skin in the game from our side in buying a brand for INR 300 crore, which Godrej itself can maybe do a far better job? It's not that easy to build a new brand. I mean, there's a large cost of a new brand and low probability of success of a new brand. Any new brand to build will cost you crores, and one in five, one in six succeed. You're effectively looking at a couple of hundred crores, even to launch a new brand to moderate success. Even to get to the scale of Muuchstac. Now, when you're looking at the kind of margin profile, EBITDA profile of Muuchstac, the retention rates of the product, it's not easy. Otherwise, nobody would buy any brand, right? It's not always easy to build new brands, especially in categories where there are three, four players. In this particular category, seeing Body Wash, we decided to extend Cinthol into Body Wash because it's a category that we know and we can do it. In some categories, we've launched our own brand. In some others, when you have a great deal come your way, you're always comparing. Yet this kind of economics would be hard to do it organically. I completely understand that. It's difficult to do it organically with the time and everything. The only thing is, have any one of us actually tried this product and are 100% convinced about the ability to scale this brand to another level in tier one towns as well, basically urban cities? We can never be 100% convinced. What we know is that men's face wash, INR 1,000 crore category, growing at 25%, it is likely to grow for a reasonable amount of time. We know that this brand is a double-digit market share brand within men's face wash, and we feel that it is only available in a few online channels. With some expansion, with some marketing money, probably the share can increase a little bit or can increase. If you go to kind of high-teens share, 20% share in a INR 1,000 crore 25% growth category, you are in for a lot of good value creation. Okay. All the best with this. We shall see over time how this turns out for us. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Participants, you may press star and then one to ask a question. Our next question comes from the line of Percy Panthaki from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Sudhir, just wanted to understand. You did give a lot of clarity on how the top-line growth will pan out in the second half of the year. Can you give some clarity on margins, both on a console as well as India level? How do we see India margins? I mean, you said palm oil is more or less sort of peaked out, no pressures, henceforth. Shall we just take the Q2 India margins for the second half, or is that a wrong approach because there is seasonality, etc.? Similarly, on console also, do we do the same thing or not? No, no. I think we'll do better than Q2 EBITDA margins in the second half. There's a pricing curve, there's a cost savings curve, there's media savings. We did lose 100. I mean, we also got deleveraged in Q2 because of GST. GST was not just a 3%-4% top-line hit, it also hits your bottom line. Twenty days, if your sales suddenly don't go through, you can't remove your fixed cost. I would say that the guidance that we've given, we kind of hold to, which is this may be at the lower end of our normative margins, 24%-26%, but that's where we'll be. Okay. In the second half, you'll be within that 24%-26% band, probably at the lower level. That is for the India business. That's for the India business. Correspondingly, the global businesses may remain at these margins of Q2. Understood. There is some seasonality there also, like Africa typically is a high margin, right? That's right. There's some seasonality in Africa, so you'll get that seasonality in Africa. I think Indonesia and Latin will roughly be the same. India will see a sequential jump. Reasons, we think. Understood. You mentioned that there is a GST impact because there is a deleverage, etc. This quarter, we saw the staff cost going down 13% YOY. That's because I think you follow that EVA-based compensation, etc. As the profits come up, the staff cost will also grow. Is that something we need to sort of consider? We've considered that, Percy. We've considered all that. The deleverage is in excess of the staff cost. We've considered the staff cost basically on the. We analyzed it, and roughly, it'll be there because there are also some cost savings coming our way in the second half, which have already gone into the market. We'll get those benefits as well. Understood. Going into FY 2027 versus the 2024 to 2026 that you'll do in the second half, what are the drivers for further margin expansion, assuming that palm oil remains where it is today? I think if palm oil remains where it is today, there are cost savings. The tree is not, I think, is one driver of margins. The second is that there are some relatively low-margin parts of our portfolio for which we are taking up margins pretty sharply, sequentially. Laundry is one of them. Incense sticks is others. These will be the two big drivers: cost savings and margin improvement on certain parts of our portfolio, which are relatively lower. Understood. Lastly, on Indonesia, you said that for now, this will be a low single-digit volume growth. On the top line, there is a significant negative pricing. Do you have any clarity on when that pricing negativity goes away, or it will only go away once it anniversalizes? See, about 4% of negative pricing will continue for another three quarters because, as I said, we've reclassified some costs into the top line because we've entered into some agreements with distributors. That negative 4% is optical and will continue. The other negativity, which is largely because of BTL increase for pricing competition, should kind of reduce over the next one or two quarters. If that BTL reduces, it should also show up in terms of EBITDA margin expansion, or that has other moving factors? It will show up in terms of some EBITDA margin expansion a little bit. Percy, right now in Indonesia, for me to give as specific an answer, I can be more specific because it's still a little bit shaky. I would say that one must expect mixing. The way I'm looking at it is we don't lose market circumstance, so do what it takes to hold market share. Market may grow at low single digits for the next few quarters, be okay with that, and figure out what to do elsewhere. Understood. Yeah, that's all from me, Sudhir and team. Thanks a lot. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If there are no further questions, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vishal Kedia for closing comments. Thank you all for your participation in today's call. We hope we have been able to satisfactorily answer all questions. For any further questions, please reach out to us on our IR contact details. Thanks again, and have a good evening. Thank you. On behalf of Godrej Consumer Products Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.