Perfect Match

As IPL gets bigger in scale and viewership, marketing tie-ups with the tournament are fetching greater visibility and returns for brands across sectors

- KATHAKALI CHANDA & NAINI THAKER

There was a time menstrual hygiene startup Niine struggled to extract payment from stockists for nearly 40 days. The brand was nascent, barely visible and was expected to wither away in the face of competition from multinational behemoths like Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Johnson & Johnson (J&J). Not anymore. “Now, all our distributors know what Niine is, markets that didn’t give us shelf space earlier are calling us to place orders, and stockists are paying up within 15 days,” says Sharat Khemka, founder of Niine.

Khemka’s magic wand has been an association with the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Rajasthan Royals as its principal sponsor. In September 2020, the three-year-old company tied up with the then-Steve Smith-led team for a logo placement on the back of their jersey. Despite the team ending up at the bottom of the table, Khemka’s business has only gone north since. Following the two-month-long tournament, played in the United Arab Emirates last year due to the Covid-19 surge in India, Niine gained a 3 percent pan-India market share, and upwards of 9 percent in Rajasthan. In its first three years of operations, the company raked in ₹14 crore per month in sanitary napkin sales, while following two months of the IPL, the number shot up to ₹20 crore. “Our competitors like P&G and J&J have now started taking us seriously. There is no better property than IPL to improve a brand’s image,” adds Khemka.