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Innovative branding and exclusive tieups power the leading lubricants company.
From last month’s cricket excellence awards to superstar Rajnikanth
riding a Castrol Power-lubricated bike, the Castrol lubricants company
in India promotes its brand among a cross section of customers in India.
The target customer for Castrol, which controls around a fifth of the
auto lubricants market in India, is both commercial and retail sector —
truckers, tractor owners, car drivers, motorcyclists, mechanics,
original equipment manufacturers and workshop owners.
The main industrial segments in which Castrol operates are automobile
manufacturing, machinery manufacturing, metals and marine. Industrial
lubricants contribute 15 per cent to Castrol’s revenues.
“When the automotive industry was still in a nascent stage in India,
Castrol took on the role of educating consumers on the need to use good
quality oil and the role it played in the maintenance of vehicles. Over
the years, the company has created several path-breaking advertising
campaigns and properties like Castrol Power1 Passion Hunt and Castrol
Golden Spanner Mechanic aimed at building brand loyalty and long-term
relationships with consumers,” says Giriraj Bagri, Vice
President-Marketing, Castrol India.
Castrol has an exclusive partnership with companies like JCB and
Mahindra Tractors amongst others and has launched customized products
like — Castrol GTX for Maruti 800 when Maruti first came into the
market 25 years ago, or Castrol GTX Compact, exclusively engineered for
Tata Nano. “Even when the brand had a low market share, it was
perceived as the market leader mainly on the strength of its technology
leadership. Castrol brands are market leaders in most of the segments
in which they operate — multigrade diesel engine oils, passenger car
oils, four stroke two wheeler oils,” adds Bagri.
The main competitors of Castrol are the nationalised oil companies,
which together hold over 50 per cent market share. Among these, the
most dominant is IndianOil with its Servo brand of lubricants. The
total lubricant market in India is 1.6 billion litres of which
automotive is about 950 million litres.
While analysts say Castrol cannot match the public sector units in
coverage (due to their petrol station networks which comprise around
30,000 stations), it does have strong distribution in other channels
like workshops and spare parts suppliers—over 70,000 outlets, which
compares well with the 40,000-plus for Indian Oil’s Servo.
PetrolWorld 201009
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