Amid an increasingly crowded space where brands vie for attention, Whisper has chosen to focus not just on marketing spin but on substantive innovation in feminine hygiene. The company is rolling out Whisper Ultra Upto No Gap No Leaks—featuring a proprietary Curvewear Technology—touted as a significant leap towards tackling the very real concerns women face during their periods.
With Bollywood actress Ananya Panday as its newly appointed brand ambassador, Whisper aims to transcend mere promotional narratives, focusing instead on providing women across India with real solutions to real problems.
On the side-lines of the launch, in a conversation with Storyboard18, Girish Kalyanaraman, Vice President and Category Head – Feminine Care at Procter & Gamble India, elaborates on how the brand’s latest offering came to be, the larger growth trajectory of the category, and the company’s strategic choices in marketing, distribution, and future expansions.
Edited Excerpts
Can you share the growth trajectory of the feminine care sector in India? Are there any specific trends you’ve noticed?
It’s been a phenomenal journey over time. When I look back at where it all started from, the category was about somewhere under Rs 35 crore. So that’s where the category size was about three decades ago. The category size now is over Rs 8,500 crore. So that’s a phenomenal jump from where we were.
That’s been possible because brands like ours have basically been focusing on eliminating the taboos around the category, focusing on how do we empower women and provide them with better performing products along with the right education.
A huge part of the work that we’ve been doing is around building education with schools. We have worked with thousands of schools for the past 20-30 years in trying to bring the right menstrual education to girls and also giving away free pads for them to experience the Whisper product. We still have a long, long way to go. There’s still a lot of opportunity for growth of the category and a lot of the opportunity for cultural change as well.
What’s your perspective in the competitive landscape in the Feminine Care industry?
It’s been the focus on consumers and the focus on delighting consumers that’s enabled us to continue to be the market leader for decades in the country. Whisper continues to be the market leading brand in the category at this stage. In the past decade and a half, we’ve seen obviously a lot of competition come up and competition in all kinds of ends of the spectrum, at the top end and at the bottom end.
It’s great because it drives a lot of conversation about the category. It drives a lot of eliminating the stigma about the category. It drives awareness and access for the right products. For us, we continue to be fully focused on delighting consumers, understanding consumers deeper, so that we are able to come up with better solutions like we’ve been doing for many years. How do we keep that going is the name of the game for us.
What was the core idea behind this campaign?
Whisper has always aimed to empower women and fuel their confidence with both outstanding products and on-ground impact, such as education. After speaking with hundreds of thousands of girls across the country, we found that the biggest anxiety in this category remains the fear of leaks. Despite many product improvements over the years, leakage issues persist, affecting women’s confidence and comfort. That insight led us back to the drawing board. We developed Curvewear Technology for the new Whisper Ultra—a first-of-its-kind approach designed to fit the body’s contours better. This raised center catches fluid at the source, drastically reducing gaps and leaks.
Beyond that, the product features advanced absorption technology combining cotton pulp and absorbent gel for dryness, and a soft top sheet to prevent rashes and discomfort. Even details like positive messaging on the product’s wrapper were co-created with women, making this innovation truly user-centric.
Are there specific media strategies you’re exploring for better engagement?
We spend a lot of time understanding from consumers, their struggles and the challenges that they go through from a period standpoint. But we also did spend a lot of time speaking to consumers about that media and shopping behaviours. So when we take this product and try and reach consumers, our approach will be essentially in sync with what the media behaviours of consumers are.
In that respect, we will be talking about this innovation on television. We will be doing our typical traditional advertising, but we will also be reaching out to consumers across all platforms where they are present, especially the Gen Z and the millennial consumer group.
Be it connected television, be it digital video, be it music streaming. So this is where the consumer of today is spending time, and therefore it is important for us to also be there and be talking to them in those platforms to drive awareness about what we’re trying to tell them.
This is a really milestone campaign for us. Our intent is to essentially drive the right reach of the message, drive the awareness of the proposition and the product, and do it in a very objective manner, in tune with the platforms where we are talking to the consumer, in line with their behaviours, and do it in a way that’s most efficient.
What’s your view of impact of quick-commerce on the category?
It’s a very exciting time from a retail standpoint for India with the advent of e-commerce and eventually quick commerce, etc. It’s changed the way consumers behave. It’s changed the way shoppers behave. Therefore, it’s important to drive the right level of access to the consumers across any store that they are shopping from.
Can you shed the light on the brand’s plans for the near future?
The opportunity in India continues to be immense in terms of education, in terms of even elevating performance of products and the different kinds of needs and catering to different needs that different women have. So we will continue to stay firmly focused on that. It’s what has worked for us for the last three decades, and we continue to stay focused on the consumer and delighting her.