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For generations, companies have been selling fair skin to young Indian women, promising better marriage and employment prospects. However, over the last few years, men have became a favoured target audience. This followed the realisation that the Indian alpha male, denied a choice in malespecific grooming products, had been using women's fairness creams all along. Until the mid-2000s, deodorants and shaving creams were the only grooming products advertised for men. But India's largest consumer goods companies sensed an opportunity, and launched a slew of fairness products for male consumers.
In India, as in other parts of the world, light skin is the culturally accepted and endorsed form of beauty, and children absorb this message at a young age.
According to a 2015 research report by Nielsen, urban Indian men believe that fair skin can improve professional prospects. The cultural pressure to look fair, argues Kiran Khalap, branding expert and founder at communications consultancy Chlorophyll, is something inherent in our society, not manufactured by companies. "And it is certainly not restricted to India: China and Japan have had skin-whitening products for centuries, well before they met Western 'white' people," he said. However, there is a growing awareness among consumers that companies are exploiting their insecurities, and critics have taken some of the biggest fairness brands, and the celebrities who endorse them, to task for their casual discrimination.
Earlier this month, Bollywood actor Abhay Deol took to Facebook to trounce his fellow actors who earn millions from endorsing fairness creams. This comes a few years after actress Nandita Das launched the "Dark is Beautiful" campaign to encourage Indians to embrace a wider definition of beauty. These efforts are slowly making a difference, increasing awareness and encouraging consumers to take pride in their natural skin tones. That means Indian companies will eventually have to change their approach. "My sense is that brands will wake up to the new reality, and you will see propositions reworked around clearer skin (and) glow, rather than pure fairness," Leo Burnett's Sinha said.
Rajesh Krishnamurthy, business head for the consumer product division at The Himalaya Drug Company, believes that over time the men's grooming category will evolve to include a wider range of products, including those for normal skin, just like in the women's skin care category. "Companies are increasingly realising that you cannot continue to bullshit consumers anymore; these are educated young men who will question what you sell to them," said Shantanu Deshpande, co-founder and CEO of the male-grooming startup Bombay Shaving Company.