Lacto Calamine has long been a staple in Indian households, trusted for its effective skincare solutions. Recently, Piramal Pharma Limited’s Piramal Consumer Healthcare (PCH) unveiled a refreshed identity for its flagship brand. This new avatar marks a modern evolution—clean, benefit-led and ingredient-focused—crafted for a new generation that values authenticity and efficacy, while staying rooted in the brand’s legacy of trust and proven performance.
Moving beyond its earlier positioning as a problem-solution, lotion-centric brand, Lacto Calamine has expanded into new-age formats such as face washes, light moisturisers, sunscreens, serums, facial wipes, sheet masks and more, firmly embedding itself into everyday skincare routines. Sai Ramana Ponugoti, Chief Executive Officer, Piramal Consumer Healthcare, shares how the brand continues to stay relevant across generations, build a complete skincare regimen, drive portfolio expansion, and pursue aggressive growth targets backed by increased marketing investments to fuel the next phase of growth.
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Lacto Calamine is a legacy brand that almost every Indian household recognises, especially for skincare. With the brand now undergoing a refresh, what prompted this move and what does the refresh really stand for?
Skincare is an exciting and fast-growing space, and we are very focused on playing to win in this category. Lacto Calamine already enjoys near-universal awareness—almost every consumer knows the brand. It has been trusted for generations, and that trust remains intact. What is evolving is how we articulate our expertise.
Today’s consumers, especially Gen Z, value transparency, ingredient clarity and proven effectiveness when making their purchase decisions. The formula remains unchanged because it already delivers on its promise. The refresh sharpens how we communicate our brand purpose—positioning Lacto Calamine clearly as the oily skin expert. One in two consumers in India has oily skin, and there is no brand globally that is positioned as an oily skin expert. That's the first point that differentiates us. We are doubling down on bringing greater transparency in communication about our trusted formula so ensure relevance across generations of consumers.
Beyond positioning, we have brought portfolio depth that is aligned to reflect real skincare needs, and expanded into other formats to ensure a complete skincare regimen. We are driving growth through omnichannel scale and digital influence. These four pillars—sharp positioning as an oily skin expert, trusted formula with transparent communication, portfolio depth, and omnichannel growth—give us confidence to win in this market. Our journey has already begun and the results are encouraging as we look to take the brand to the next level.
This refresh has been described as a “rediscovery” rather than a reinvention. The visual identity and packaging have also changed significantly. Can you talk about that transformation?
While refreshing the identity, it was important for us to retain the brand’s iconic status and expertise. The messaging lens continues to focus on confidence, control and care for oily skin. This positioning allows us to build authority in a high-growth category where credibility and consistency matter more than aesthetic only beauty narratives.
The refresh is strategic, not cosmetic. The new purple packaging focuses on clearer benefit storytelling and visual simplicity, aligning with the expectations of today’s educated skincare users. The refresh strengthens brand recall, reinforces trust, and bridges generations—those who grew up with Lacto Calamine and those discovering it through digital platforms and community recommendations.
How has the portfolio expansion worked so far, and what have you learned?
Our biggest learning has been consistently about the importance of staying true to our core positioning and equity as the oily skin expert. While many segments may appear tempting, we remain focused and disciplined on our sharp positioning.
We have defined five hero formats the Hero 5 —cleansers, moisturizers, sunscreen, serums and treatments. While additional products exist online, our omnichannel strategy revolves around these five. Another key learning is being deeply consumer-centric, rooted in ingredient-based decision-making, multi-step personalization, and proven efficacy with a superior product.
The refreshed identity rollout has already begun, with the lotion available in the new format and the rest transitioning over the next few months. The response so far has been very encouraging.
Digital today is often associated with performance marketing, while brand building is seen as the domain of traditional media. How are you approaching full-funnel engagement in such a competitive market?
We are building two strong cultures within the organization—consumer centricity and digital-first thinking. Our media mix constantly evolves based on how consumers discover and shop within the category.
We’ve shifted from a broad, mass-media approach to sharply targeted digital-first marketing, while maintaining balance with television. Today, 20–30% of our spends are on digital, and in some skincare campaigns, this goes up to 80%. We actively invest across OTT, CTV, social platforms and performance-led digital.
Skincare discovery has moved from traditional search to social media and platforms like Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat; e-commerce and quick commerce. As consumers our completing their journeys in a few clicks, our campaigns are designed for full-funnel journeys within these platforms, prioritising direct path-to-purchase, driving traffic to marketplaces and quick commerce platforms rather than relying on the earlier basket-building behaviour. Influencers and collaborative ads play a key role in driving authentic engagement and conversions. Our organization is consumer-centric and digital-first to win with skincare consumers on Lacto Calamine.
How do your media spends split between traditional and digital platforms overall?
At a company level, the split is approximately 60–40 between traditional and digital. However, this varies by category as some campaigns have seen 80% spends on digital. Skincare sees a much higher digital share, as consumer behaviour in this category is very different from others like kids’ or women’s wellness.
With an expanded product range, are you planning to increase your marketing spends?
Yes, absolutely. We are confident and excited about the brand’s potential and the full skincare regimen we’re building and have seen traction for the different formats. Our plans involve aggressive growth targets and our spends are planned to cater to being able to deliver the growth.
With multiple ecosystems—general trade, modern trade, e-commerce and quick commerce—how do you ensure consistent brand equity and messaging?
While each channel has a unique shopping and discovery journey, our core storytelling remains consistent. Lacto Calamine invests in credible digital storytelling, dermatologist-backed content and trusted voices, including our ambassador ecosystem.
Availability is equally critical. We are expanding across e-commerce, pharmacies, cosmetic stores, retail, modern trade and general trade, ensuring the brand meets consumers wherever they shop today as well as tomorrow. Our growth agenda is firmly driven by omnichannel scale and digital influence.
You’ve worked with multiple brand ambassadors. You onboarded Mrunal Thakur in December 2024, how has this partnership worked out?
We are very happy with Manushi Chhillar and excited about the journey ahead with her. Beyond brand ambassadors, we collaborate with over 1,000 influencers who align well with Lacto Calamine’s values and positioning.
How have your other brands—Littles, iPill, Tetmosol, Polycrol, i-Active—performed, and how important is education in your communication?
We are on a strong double-digit growth trajectory, significantly ahead of industry growth. Our strategy focuses on four pillars: power-brand-led growth with sharp portfolio focus, innovation with speed, precision in future channels, and tech-enabled agility.
Power brands like Littles, Lacto Calamine, CIR range and Tri-Activ contribute more than half of our sales and we have doubled down on these brands. We've invested behind each brand with the intent of driving both scale as well as intent. Our strategy is fewer brands, deeper investment, and sharper relevance to Indian consumers across the segments.
Innovation is a major growth engine and we operate with the heart of a startup, but the might of a science-based innovation growth engine. We launched nearly 50 new products last year across formats, need states and price-points. Innovation is a revenue growth engine for us and with contributes 11% of revenue.
We are focusing on driving growth with precision in channels of the future with business from emerging, high-growth channels significantly growing in contribution.
The final pillar is tech enablement for agility, because we are not just selling products but reading signals using real-time analytics, AI tools, and predictive insights to take faster calls across all aspects of our business, supply, assortment, marketing. Agility has been a game changer for us. Sharp choices, speed and relentless execution are the three mantras helping us deliver the results.
Education plays a vital role in healthcare marketing. Our approach is simple—learn, relate and choose. We address real consumer questions, tell relatable stories and ensure affordability and accessibility. Both education and brand building are equally important.
FY25 was a landmark year with ₹1,000 crore in annual revenue. What are your goals for the next five years, and what will drive growth?
Our focus is firmly on FY30 and aim to double our business and achieve double-digit EBITDA margins by then. Our priorities include sales excellence across online and offline channels to drive discovery, strong revenue growth management, operational excellence through cost optimisation, and organizational capability building and transformation.
We are building a strong beauty, digital and consumer-centric culture internally. With these focus areas, we are confident of achieving our FY30 goals—driven by margin, reach and impact.