e4m Video Story:  ITC’s Rohit Dogra on how e-commerce, quick commerce are reshaping India’s agarbatti market

A year into his role as Chief Executive Officer of ITC’s Matches & Agarbatti Division, Rohit Dogra says the company’s strategy is beginning to deliver results, with Mangaldeep strengthening its position in an agarbatti market that is seeing growing premiumisation, wider digital adoption and changing consumer preferences.

For starters, the company is now the clear leader in the market as against a year earlier where ITC Agarbatti was the largest in the country by volume and ranked second by value. Dogra says, “We have grown at nearly twice the pace of the overall industry. We are the largest brand by value and volume. We are maintaining the growth trajectory and seen growth in our premium and popular portfolio, and expanded presence across formats and fragrances.”

According to Dogra, While the agarbatti market is growing at around 8-9% in value, Mangaldeep has maintained value growth of approximately 16-17%, while also outpacing the industry in volumes. The strategy, he says, is rooted in a five-year business plan rather than a series of short-term bets. While learnings from ITC’s other FMCG businesses have been useful, the company continues to focus on category-specific consumer insights, including understanding how consumers discover category and enter the category, how they interact with products and the occasions that drive consumption.

He says, “We started multiple initiatives ahead of the industry and this has given dividends. Even in terms of channel deployment, we have kept pace with other FMCG categories.”

Premiumisation finds a natural ally in e-commerce

One of the biggest shifts in the category has been the rise of e-commerce and quick commerce. Dogra describes both channels as key opportunities for the industry, and states that Mangaldeep is a market leader with a “commanding share” across these platforms. The early growth of e-commerce and quick commerce was largely driven by urban consumers seeking specific products and experiences. This created an opportunity for Mangaldeep to use these channels to expand its premium portfolio.

The company has since built on that momentum by introducing more offerings aimed at premium consumers. Dogra says, “When a channel grows fast, the overall portfolio mix changes the profile, value, profitability pool, investments and the business focus. We have been able to do that well over the last year and seen growth in these channels.”

As the e-commerce and quick commerce platforms expand into smaller towns, however, Dogra expects the opportunity to become broader with the demand no longer restricted to premium products, with offerings across different price points beginning to gain traction.

Moving beyond the one-campaign model

The changing media landscape is also prompting a rethink of how Mangaldeep communicates with consumers. Dogra believes the era of relying on a “single tentpole campaign” is over, particularly in a category with close to 95% annual household penetration. The largely fragmented nature of the agarbatti industry remains another important consideration. Dogra estimates that around 30-35% of the category remains unorganised and fragmented nationally, although the level of consolidation varies significantly across markets with the Southern markets being more organised.

For a mass, widely distributed category such as agarbatti, traditional media continues to play an important role. Television remains a key medium at scale, particularly in markets where mass communication is critical. At the same time, digital platforms have become an important part of the marketing mix.

He says, “We use traditional media such as television at scale and there are markets where the deployment is intensive. We supplement this with digital where increasingly a large part of our spending outlay is deployed. We do work and spending also on e-commerce and quick commerce platforms as the platform allows aids the consumer journey from discovery to purchase.”

The approach is also tailored related to the portfolio and the consumer. Premium products tend to see a larger share of digital investment, while mass brands, such as Mangaldeep Anushri by ITC, continue to rely heavily on mass media. The media mix can also vary by city, portfolio and marketing objective, encompassing digital, connected TV, television, print and other forms of mass communication. The same shift is visible within commerce marketing. E-commerce and quick-commerce platforms increasingly play a role across the consumer journey, from discovery to purchase, making them both distribution and marketing channels.

Mass remains the backbone, premium drives growth

Despite the rapid growth of premium products, Dogra is clear that the mass segment remains the largest volume driver for the business, while the popular and mid-popular segments continue to register healthy growth and remain critical to the category’s overall scale.  Dogra says, “There is a lot of innovation happening in the popular (mass) and mid-popular segment by us as well as the competition.”

He continues, “The premium segment is over-indexed by 4x-5x in growth terms, compared to the overall industry growth.” For Mangaldeep, the opportunity lies in balancing these two ends of the market—protecting its mass-market strength while building products and experiences that can encourage consumers to trade up.

Matchboxes get a premium makeover

The company’s premiumisation strategy extends beyond agarbatti to its matches business, where ITC has experimented with new price points and differentiated offerings in an environment where the price-point has remained at ₹1 over decades.

Its move from the traditional ₹1 price point to ₹2 was not simply a price increase, Dogra explains, “We did not just double the price-point, instead offered a differentiated consumer experience through better-quality splints, longer matchsticks and carbonised sticks designed to prevent breakage. We appreciate the fact that consumers use it not just for the ordinary purposes but also use it to light a diya, agarbatti or dhoop.” He added, “We have seen double-digit growth as far as the value-added portfolio is concerned, in a stagnated industry and have grown on the ₹2 price point with the differentiated offerings.”

ITC also introduced Dazzle, a premium matchbox positioned around the evolving expectations of urban consumers with the matchbox priced at ₹10. Dogra says early consumer and e-commerce feedback has been encouraging, with the company viewing Dazzle as a niche but fast-growing platform that can be developed further.

Innovation moves beyond fragrance

In the agarbatti category, innovation is not limited to introducing new fragrances. Dogra describes fragrance delivery, product formats, consumption occasions, channels and activations as different vectors of innovation. The company is exploring new occasions such as gifting, while also looking at how consumers use products and where they discover them. He reiterates, “We keep trying to something different to create a more relevant and meaningful consumer engagement. This is also an innovation point with consumers.”

Making spirituality more experiential

This thinking is also evident in ITC’s premium Scent portfolio, which combines spirituality and newer fragrance experiences. Dogra says the portfolio is growing significantly faster than the rest of the business, reflecting the company’s belief that consumers are looking for different experiences within the category. For a category traditionally associated with prayer and devotion, ITC is increasingly looking at consumer experience as a way to create deeper engagement.

He says, “We are encouraged by the consumer response on the back of the insights we garnered. This has grown at a fast rate and if I were to put a number to the overall consumer spend on this category, it should be upwards of ₹170 crores. The Mangaldeep Scent 3in1 is doing well both in terms of distribution and repeat consumer purchase.”

The Mangaldeep Scent premium offering is being expanded across formats including cones and sticks, with e-commerce and quick commerce expected to play an important role in broadening its reach. He adds, “Our brand tagline, 'Dil se Karo Baat, Bhagwan Ke Saath’ brings in individuality to devotion and as Indian consumers evolve Mangaldeep Scent plays a role and we have kept pace with the consumers.”

Dogra believes that the very nature of fragrance creates an opportunity to move beyond conventional experiences and introduce consumers to newer territories. Large cultural and religious gatherings, therefore, become more than opportunities for visibility—they offer a chance to create meaningful brand interactions and experience. He states, “Large festival gatherings are the ultimate manifestation of devotion with consumers travelling to make the spiritual journey. As a brand, the engagement is of a different nature and our objective has always been to create meaning behind that engagement.”

The company’s activations around Kumbh and Deep Utsav in Ayodhya illustrate this approach. Rather than limiting its presence to conventional branding and merchandising on-ground, Mangaldeep sought to create ways for consumers who could not physically participate in these events to experience them. He adds, “We did activations on-ground to create engagement and strengthen brand trust. Mangaldeep stands for devotion and large religious gatherings helps us reinforce this point in a cultural context. These engagements work on a long-term basis.”

Festive season brings another growth opportunity

With the festive season approaching, ITC is preparing a combination of new consumer offers, trade activations and channel-specific initiatives. The company expects its extensive distribution network and stronger portfolio to help drive growth during the season. Dogra says the company’s approach is to make each festive cycle “higher, stronger and better”, with activations already being deployed across markets and additional initiatives planned with channel partners.

Turning inclusion into a business capability

One of the more distinctive examples of Mangaldeep’s approach to brand building is its Sixth Sense CSR campaign, which highlighted visually impaired fragrance evaluators working with the company. Dogra says the initiative began in 2021 and was initially viewed not simply through a CSR lens but as an opportunity to recognise a specialised capability. Rather than focusing on visual impairment as a limitation, the company identified the evaluators’ ability to discern fragrances as a distinctive strength.

Today, around 200 evaluators are associated with the initiative, contributing to fragrance evaluation, product development and competitive benchmarking. For ITC, the initiative has evolved into a meaningful business capability as well as a story that can be shared with consumers.

A differentiated approach to brand building

While competitors in the category have increasingly turned to sports sponsorships and cricket associations, Mangaldeep is taking a more contextual approach to brand building. Dogra says the brand evaluates associations based on the audience it wants to reach and the role Mangaldeep seeks to play in consumers’ lives. While the company does not rule out large-scale sponsorships, its focus remains on finding associations that fit the brand’s positioning around devotion and spirituality.

For Mangaldeep, the ambition is not simply to maximise reach, but to establish itself as a partner in consumers’ spiritual journeys. Dogra says, “Our objective is always to be contextually be about, 'Dil se Karo Baat, Bhagwan Ke Saath’ and being a partner in your spiritual journey and prayer. That is what we look forward to when we are looking at associations.”