New entrants and smaller brands are now dominating the hand sanitiser market, a segment which has witnessed multi-fold surge in sales post the Covid-19 crisis, says a report.

Following the Covid-19 crisis, when demand for hand sanitisers increased, smaller players jumped in to exploit the demand surge and in the month of March, around 61 per cent of the market was captured by these newly launched brands, Nielsen said without naming the brands.

Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, brand Dettol from Reckitt Benckiser, Savlon from ITC and Lifebuoy from HUL were leading the markets. Some other FMCG makers including Godrej Consumers and Himalaya Drug Company are also present in the segment.

However, in March, when the demand surged after the pandemic of Covid-19, these brands were unable to serve the market demand despite their increased efforts, and several other companies jumped into the sector.

While in the month of January and February, the top three FMCG brands enjoyed 85 per cent market share of the hand sanitisers, which was considered to be a very niche product and limited only to key metro markets before the Covid-19 crisis.

According to the data, the value share of the new players in the month of March in hand sanitiser was 46 per cent.

In the month of March, as many as 152 new players entered the hand sanitisers segment.

FMCG companies such as Dabur, Emami, Patanjali, Marico etc has launched their hand santisers in April to claim a share in the zooming market.

Besides, several liquor makers, sugar factories and others also started production of hand santiser after the government asked them to manufacture to meet the growing demand to tackle spread of pandemic.

In March, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs had also capped the maximum retail price of hand sanitiser at Rs 100 per 200ml bottle till June 30 this year amid a sharp rise in the prices of this product owing to the coronavirus outbreak.