• Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Wednesday, June 23, 2010 10:30 AM

The Cincinnati-based giant is ogling the $24 billion consumer packaged goods industry in that country, ramping up marketing for some brands such as Pampers and cutting prices on others, like Pantene, reports Anjali Cordeiro.

India is the world's second-most-populous country, with a CPG growth of 12% a year, says Nielsen, and it represents growth potential and challenges for Procter & Gamble, which is confronted with a consumer-spending slump in the U.S. and Europe. "As P&G reaches its next billion consumers, a lot of them have to come from India," says Sumeet Vohra, P&G's India marketing director.

Still, Cordeiro says, the company lags behind rival Unilever there. And price cuts and investments could cut into local profits, while small grocers remain slow to carry some of its brands because of the price points and/or the space the products take up in the store.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that Unilever is relying on new versions of its products to keep sales going in emerging markets like India and China. Unilever plans to boost the amount it spends building factories in Indonesia over the next two to three years as it adds products to fend off P&G in the world's fourth-most-populous country.

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