Tear, Stick, Win: How Hansaplast Peeled its Way into QComm Success

It was no surprise that Hansaplast, the wound-care brand often synonymous with bandaids, saw its stocks fast depleting in early January during Makar Sankranti - the festival of kites.

Sales were particularly high on Quick Commerce (QComm) platforms, where the brand is seeing growth in multiples. Having entered the QComm space in the latter half of 2024, the scale and speed of their success on the platforms has taken the brand completely by surprise.

“When your second half of the year is 300% over the run rate of the first half, that’s a definite case study,” beamed Priyanka Agarwal, Marketing Director of Beiersdorf (Hansaplast), as she talked to us about the brand’s QComm successes.

Whether you are an established name or a young brand trying to make it on its own, QComm provides a level-playing field for all. And Hansaplast’s success story has something to offer to everyone.

In a free-wheeling and insightful chat with us, Priyanka shared many stories and some strategies that have so far guided Hansaplast’s successful yet nascent QComm journey.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation -

One of the biggest challenges is not understanding how the value model of the entire supply chain - from listing to the consumer ordering on the platform - works. It's important to understand where the value flow is. But the technology here itself is a challenge.

The second challenge is the concept of dark stores, and how the inventory and assortment in dark stores gets managed. We have low visibility and very low control over it.

The third is that all of us are new to this - the partners, the workforce, everyone who is trying to develop these channels. So everybody is learning in this environment every day.

The launch of the active range (orthopaedic soft supports) on Blinkit was enabled using GobbleCube insights.

We were tracking data on availability, offtakes, localities, cities, etc. every day once we launched. We had some very surprising insights about where we were selling and how much which further helped us to improve sales. We are now selling more than 200-300 units a day.

Before Blinkit, active range products (orthopaedic soft supports) and GobbleCube happened, the conversation was, “Oh my god, we have so much stock! How are we going to liquidate it?” And two months later we're saying, “Oh my god, we don't have any stocks to sell! And there's so much demand.”

The success of this active range was honestly beyond our imagination. We didn't think it would end up contributing to a significant portion of our QComm business.

Gobblecube has helped us with one of our biggest levers of growth - availability. Even today modern trade talks about listing and availability which are the same issues being discussed on QComms.

At our end, we had absolutely no information or insight into what's going on at a molecular, pin code or dark store level. This is now being enabled through a real-time flash of insights and information from GobbleCube.

Second is - QComm functions at lightning speed. So to be able to take informed decisions, access to real-time data and insights is a necessity. For years we have manually spent hours consolidating the same set of data and insights across various platforms. Now all of this comes together in one go, on one platform.

Tracking availability in real-time has helped us to understand the impact of sub-par availability on our business. So once we see where we are losing out, we can pool all our resources towards correcting that.

The second thing is that Gobblecube has created an alert system for us where we receive early morning alerts across platforms with an analysis of the top problematic areas - be it an SKU, a darkstore, a pin code or a city.

So our sales team can just pick up that input and quickly get in touch with the category managers for real-time follow-up and resolution.

On QComm platforms, you can create an occasion of purchase everyday in India - whether it is Sankrant, Holi, Diwali, Winters, Mother's Day, and so on. If there is no other celebration within the larger umbrella of events then they create their own, like the recent one promoting sports wear.

Now, during Sankrant, we got a lot of visibility on platforms such as Blinkit and Zepto. This is because we had listed Hansaplast on the ‘Kites’ listing page. So if you looked for kites, you would have also seen Hansaplast on the search page.

On QComm, since things move so quickly, I got to see the results of this campaign within a couple of days, analyzed our performance, and then decided on my leap into the next occasion of purchase.

The number of brands per category on QComm is low, for now. But over the next year or so, a lot of brands would like to be a part of the QComm phenomena.

Therefore in the next one year brands should work towards cracking QComm in a way that they can maintain their leadership position or early mover advantage. Platforms like Gobblecube can help to do that in a scientific, efficient manner.

This is an opportunity to leverage data to use speed, performance marketing, creativity, digital innovations etc. for young brands trying to establish themselves from a brand perspective too, and not from a sales perspective alone.

The quickness of us being able to make right decisions and have meaningful conversations is I think the best impact that GobbleCube has had for us.

Recently a platform approached us saying we were not spending much on the ortho segment. According to them, since there were only 4 brands, our market share should have been ~25 -30%.

Since GobbleCube shows you historical data, I immediately looked at our SOV and saw it was around 25-27%. This means we have been spending enough on search, so we asked the platform what else we can do.

We are able to have such meaningful conversations and quick closures because finally there is a fact that exists for everybody to see and understand.

When there is high organic demand for a brand - in terms of number of people visiting your page or buying from you - the platform algorithm automatically gives you a preferential placement.

Further, using insights, I can establish good availability, share of voice, and all the other right metrics to cement my leadership position and early movement, before the entry of new competitors.

Maintaining leadership is about prioritizing what's going to move quickly. GobbleCube is a great platform and partner for us to get to that level of decision-making.