The story of Vini Cosmetics (company known for Fogg deodorants) and the legend behind it Mr Darshan Patel!

A thread (1/11)

Darshan Patel the founder and CEO of Vini Cosmetics started hi career by joining his fathers company Paras pharmaceuticals in 1985 and spent the new few years studying and understanding the Indian consumer and the market (2/)

It was in 1995 the company launched Krack which was focused on healing cracked heals and it became an overnight success and much of its success was attributed to the insights generated by Darshan while studying the Indian market and its needs (3/)

The company soon launched a number of brands like Dcold, Borosoft, Ring guard, itch guard between 1996-2000 and all of these in no time became a common household name across India. In 2002, the company disrupted the market with launch of Livon-the first hair detangler (4/)

This was soon followed by launching Set wet hairstyling gel in 2005 which took the market by storm and was soon followed by deos under the same brand name. But, it was in 2006 that Darshan decide to exit his fathers company and sold his 24% stakes for $43 Mn...(5/)

..and went on to create his own firm Vini Cosmetics in 2007 and spent the next few years on consumer research. It was in 2010 Vini was launched and started selling pharma products and also launched white tone powder (6/)

It was in the same year that Darshan's fathers company and all the iconic brands that it produced got acquired by Reckitt Benckiser. Meanwhile, Darshan was working on something big which was gonna change the entire product category market soon! (7/)

It was in 2011 that Vini cosmetics launched Fogg deodorants in a market dominated by Axe, Park avenue backed by big multinationals but in no time Fogg managed to dethrone all the existing players and became the number 1 in the segment in just 2 years, (8/)

Much of its success is attributed to the focus on value prop- "no gas" being a differentiated attribute and also huge spend on creating those quirky ads which helped it in dominating the markets in years to come [apparently Fogg is an acronym for Friends of good guys/girls] (9/

Today, Vini cosmetics is ~1000 Cr company with 80% of its revenues coming from Fogg which has 36 variants and is sold in over 65 countries today. Some of the other products of the company are White tone powder, Glam up cream, Ossum deos (10/)

The company is growing at a healthy pace and plans to take the topline to 2000 Cr in few years with product launches in 3 new categories underway. With the legacy of such iconic products behind, we can surely expect Vini to launch few game changing products soon! (11/11)