Domex and the Sanitation Awareness Agenda in India: A Case Study in Purpose-Led Category Building

Industry & Competitive Context

Domex operates in India's toilet and surface cleaner category, a segment within the broader home care portfolio of Hindustan Unilever Limited, India's largest fast-moving consumer goods company. Domex was launched in India in 1997, as confirmed by HUL's own brand communications Domex, part of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), India's largest fast-moving consumer goods company, has been around since its India launch in 1997. Globally, the parent brand is sold as Domestos and operates in over 45 countries, with HUL describing it as a leader in nearly all the markets where it competes Sold in over 45 countries under a variety of names, including Domex in India and Vim in Argentina, Domestos is leading in nearly all the markets where it operates. In India, the category context was shaped by a structural market gap. According to HUL's own communications around its 2017 toilet cleaning powder launch, branded toilet cleaners were both expensive and underpenetrated, with detergent powder serving as the dominant proxy product, a substitute that was reasonably effective at cleaning but poor at addressing germs and malodour In India, branded toilet cleaners are both expensive and an underpenetrated category. The most common proxy product is detergent powder. This may be reasonably good at cleaning, but it isn't effective at killing germs or tackling the biggest unaddressed problem: malodour. The competitive landscape is dominated by Reckitt Benckiser's Harpic, described by The Drum as the long-standing category leader Harpic in India has been the largest player, occupying a sizable chunk of the category, with Domex trailing behind. The category itself gained commercial relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Drum reported that Harpic alone saw a significant expansion in household penetration during this period. As per reports, an additional 20m households used RB's Harpic brand of toilet cleaners, which would have grown several times over as the infection gripped more and more people in the last few months. A second structural driver was government policy. The Government of India's Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission, a large-scale national toilet-building programme, created both a social mandate and a commercial opportunity for sanitation-linked brands. Bloomberg-syndicated reporting carried by theprint.in characterised the scale of this programme and its market implications Prime Minister Narendra Modi's $20 billion "Clean India" mission aims to construct 111 million latrines in five years. Besides promising to improve the health, safety and dignity of hundreds of millions of Indians, the national hygiene drive has spurred an 81 per cent jump in sales of concrete building materials and 48 per cent increase in bathroom and sanitaryware sales, according to Euromonitor International. The same report explicitly named HUL's response to this opportunity Hindustan Unilever Ltd entered the low-cost toilet cleaner market with a new powdered product, and has been trying to make toilets accessible and affordable through its Domex Toilet Academy.

Brand Situation Prior to Campaign

Prior to its major awareness-led initiatives, Domex's market position in India can be summarised along three dimensions, each grounded in verified statements.

Underlying market problem. HUL's own materials cited the scale of India's sanitation deficit as the foundational rationale for brand activity: With only 58% of the country's 263 million households having a toilet, a massive toilet building programme is underway as part of the Government of India's Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign. Almost 100 million new homes will be adopting a toilet by 2019. Unilever's global communications further contextualised the open defecation problem using WHO/UNICEF estimates, as documented in CSRBOX's case record of the Domex Toilet Academy World Health Organisation and United Nations Children's Education Fund (UNICEF) estimate that there are more than 620 million people practicing open defecation due to lack of access to proper sanitation and 60% of all open defecations in the world are in India.

Brand challenger status. Within the branded toilet cleaner category, Domex was positioned as the challenger rather than the leader, a status The Drum described directly in its coverage of Domex's 2021 campaign against Harpic Harpic in India has been the largest player, occupying a sizable chunk of the category, with Domex trailing behind.

Low category engagement. HUL executive Prabha Narasimhan, in an interview published by The Drum, characterised the toilet cleaning category as one where consumer decision-making was largely habitual rather than informed "For a long time consumers have been choosing a toilet cleaner as a force of habit without tending to question the right ingredients and technological aspects before choosing the product," says Prabha Narasimhan, executive director and vice-president – home care (South Asia), Hindustan Unilever Ltd.

Strategic Objective

Based on documented public statements, Domex's sanitation-linked initiatives in India pursued objectives operating on two distinct but connected tracks: a market-development (access) track and a brand-equity (awareness and differentiation) track. On the market-development track, Unilever's own leadership perspective, published via Business Fights Poverty, articulated an explicit dual rationale combining social purpose and commercial logic .There is a moral imperative for us to act, but there is also a business opportunity. Put simply, if there are more toilets in the world, Unilever has the opportunity to sell more toilet cleaners. The same source described the long-horizon market-creation logic behind the Domex Toilet Academy .We take a long-term view that by facilitating the creation of new toilets and sanitation businesses, we will be stimulating a market for cleaning products in the future. A specific, time-bound global target was also disclosed by Unilever: The ambition of Domestos – or Domex, as the brand is called in some countries – is to help 25 million people get improved access to a toilet by 2020. On the brand-equity track, the 2021 "toilet war" campaign against Harpic was framed by HUL as an effort to shift the category from habitual purchase to evidence-based decision-making, as Narasimhan stated "The latest communication is in line with our goal to give consumers the evidence to help make informed decisions determined by scientific insight and technology."

Campaign Architecture & Execution

Domex's sanitation-related activity in India spans several distinct, independently documented initiatives rather than a single unified campaign. Each is summarised below strictly on the basis of verified sources.

Domex Toilet Academy (DTA)

Launched in 2014, the Domex Toilet Academy is described by CSRBOX as a market-based entrepreneurial training model Domex Toilet Academy (DTA) is a unique market-based entrepreneurial model launched by the Company in 2014. DTA programme trains entrepreneurs and masons to help build and maintain toilets; provides access to micro-financing and creates demand for toilets in low-income households. The programme's operating model relied on a partner social enterprise, as documented in the same CSRBOX record DTA and eKutir Rural Management Services Private Limited, a half social enterprise identifies and trains local micro-entrepreneurs who help execute the project in their local communities by supplying and building toilets. DTA provides the seed capital to these entrepreneurs through eKutir to start up their activity, and also helps with initial operational costs for the execution of the project. A state-specific scale-up in Bihar was independently documented by PSI, Unilever's implementation partner, including a defined target .Since 2015, Unilever and Domestos has partnered with PSI to launch a large-scale Domex Toilet Academy (DTA) program in the state of Bihar, India, building on PSI's existing partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Our aim is to see DTA trained entrepreneurs sell and install 115,000 household toilets by 2017.

#ToiletforBabli Digital Campaign

As part of the DTA programme, Domex ran a digital advocacy campaign documented in 2014, described as an online participation initiative .Domex #ToiletforBabli is a unique online campaign (launched as part of DTA programme) through which you can also take part and show your support in this initiative. The objective of the broader DTA programme at this stage was described asto make private toilet accessible in the villages and spread awareness about the benefits of sanitary toilet in the household.

"See-Through Toilet" Experiential/Outdoor Campaign

Documented by Campaigns of the World, this initiative involved an experiential installation in a mall setting designed to simulate the experience of open defecation for passers byIt is a clear representation of creative advertising ideas because they actually go to a mall and build a toilet that is equivalent to open defecation. The crew asks people walking around in the mall to use it. The same source reported a cumulative output figure for the broader programme at that time .Domex, being committed to the cause, has built nearly 70,000 toilets since 2015.

Toilet Cleaning Powder (Affordable Innovation)

In March 2017, Domex launched a low-cost toilet cleaning powder as a test-market innovation in Andhra Pradesh, as announced on HUL's official site Launched in the state of Andhra Pradesh, as a test market, in March 2017, the product has received an encouraging response from consumers. If the pilot is successful, the plan is to expand into other states. This was explicitly positioned as addressing the bottom-of-the-pyramid segment, with HUL's Priya Nair, then Executive Director, Home Care, stating "Domex has first-mover advantage in a market where people still use proxies to clean their toilets. Hindustan Unilever has a history of bringing to market consumer-relevant and affordable innovations."

COVID-19 Disinfection Drives (2020–2021)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Domex's role shifted toward public hygiene and disinfection messaging. HUL's official press release described a month-long on-ground campaign at Mumbai suburban railway stations In a bid to ensure safety of citizens, leading expert and clinical disinfection brand, Domex by Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL) is running a month-long on-ground campaign wherein it has introduced disinfection drives at some of the busiest Mumbai Local Trains stations. The campaign covered specific named stations Starting with Dadar and CST stations, Domex with this campaign decided to empower travellers by providing superior disinfection. The stated communication objective was explicitly behaviour-change oriented, as described in the same release .The intent of this campaign was to create awareness around disinfection and hygiene, and encourage commuters to adopt the same outlook at home and in public spaces. This activity was also linked to a formal civic partnership, confirmed in HUL's ESG disclosures Domex has also worked with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) to disinfect public spaces identified by civic bodies. HUL's broader COVID-19 response disclosures also quantified product donations In 2021, we donated around 2 lakh Domex disinfectant products towards various disinfection initiatives.

The "Toilet War" Brand Campaign (2021)

In July 2021, Domex launched a multi-language brand campaign that directly contrasted its product claims with those of category leader Harpic. The Drum's coverage detailed the creative execution The brand has launched a campaign in many languages, including Hindi and Tamil, in a classic 'homemaker and kid at a retail outlet ambience' narrative. While the Hindi version features well-known TV star Divyanka Tripathi, the Tamil version has the famous film actor Revathy. The campaign has been conceptualized by Lowe Lintas India.

The product platform underpinning this campaign was Domex Fresh Guard, whose claims were described in a press release carried by medianews4uThe improved Domex Fresh Guard Disinfectant Toilet Cleaner doesn't just claim a 99.9% germ-kill formula but proves it through ISO-certified lab attestations. The result is a clean, odor free toilet with a lasting freshness of up to 100 flushes. The product mechanism was described in technical detail The product consists of surface modification molecules that leave a protective hydrophobic layer on the toilet commode surface which reduce water, stain and germ build-up, thereby troubleshooting persistent problems such as cleanliness, hygiene and malodour.

Swachh Aadat School Curriculum

HUL's ESG disclosures describe a schools-focused habit-formation programme spanning multiple brands, including Domex's category (toilet hygiene)Our Swachh Aadat Curriculum teaches children in classes 1-5 the importance of adopting three clean habits – washing hands with soap, safe drinking water practices and using clean toilets over a 21-day period. Its geographic rollout was specified The textbook version of the curriculum was rolled out in Government schools in Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Haryana. We also launched a digital school curriculum during the pandemic that was piloted in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Delhi.

Positioning & Consumer Insight

Domex's positioning architecture, as evidenced across these initiatives, rests on three layered insights, each explicitly documented.

Insight 1: Sanitation is a dignity and rights issue, not merely a hygiene issue. This framing is most visible in the Bangladesh market (where Domex operates under Unilever Bangladesh), but the underlying insight informs Domex's broader sanitation positioning. Unilever's description of the Bhumijo partnership articulated this directly Dhaka, one of the largest cities in the world, had only one public toilet for every 75,000 people on the streets back in 2021. These toilets were also not clean. This situation has created a problem of public urination among men and has led women who work outdoors to drink less water.

Insight 2: The category suffers from an "informed choice" deficit. As Narasimhan stated regarding the Indian market, consumers had not historically evaluated toilet cleaners on functional or technical merit "For a long time consumers have been choosing a toilet cleaner as a force of habit without tending to question the right ingredients and technological aspects before choosing the product." This insight directly informed the 2021 "evidence-based" repositioning around ISO-certified claims.

Insight 3: Affordability is the binding constraint on category penetration, not awareness alone. The 2017 toilet cleaning powder launch was premised on this insight, with the product positioned explicitly as a low-cost substitute for the prevailing proxy product (detergent powder), as described in HUL's release In India, branded toilet cleaners are both expensive and an underpenetrated category. The most common proxy product is detergent powder. This may be reasonably good at cleaning, but it isn't effective at killing germs or tackling the biggest unaddressed problem: malodour.

Media & Channel Strategy

Verified channel elements across Domex's sanitation-linked activity include:

• On-ground/experiential activation: Mall-based experiential installations (See-Through Toilet campaign)the advertising agency of Hindustan Unilever's Domex brand came up with a creative outdoor campaign... they actually go to a mall and build a toilet that is equivalent to open defecation, and railway station disinfection drives at named Mumbai stations Starting with Dadar and CST stations, Domex with this campaign decided to empower travellers by providing superior disinfection.

  
  

• Digital/online participation campaigns: The #ToiletforBabli initiative was explicitly described as an online campaign inviting public participation Domex #ToiletforBabli is a unique online campaign (launched as part of DTA programme) through which you can also take part and show your support in this initiative.

  
  

• Television/multi-language brand advertising: The 2021 campaign used Hindi and Tamil executions featuring named celebrities, created by a named agency The brand has launched a campaign in many languages, including Hindi and Tamil... While the Hindi version features well-known TV star Divyanka Tripathi, the Tamil version has the famous film actor Revathy. The campaign has been conceptualized by Lowe Lintas India.

  
  

• Institutional/government partnerships: A confirmed partnership with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai for public space disinfection Our brand Domex has worked with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) to disinfect public spaces identified by the civic bodies in respective wards in Mumbai.

  
  

• NGO/development partnerships: PSI's documented role in training entrepreneurs under the Bihar DTA programme Between 2015 through early 2017, PSI has trained 500 entrepreneurs and more than 130,000 toilets have been built.

Business & Brand Outcomes

The following outcome metrics are drawn directly from named, citable sources. Outcomes are reported separately by initiative, as the sources do not present a consolidated figure across all campaigns.

Domex Toilet Academy — cumulative reach (CSRBOX, India-wide): Since its inception, the DTA has trained more than 600 micro-entrepreneurs. To date, over 2 lakhs toilets have been built, benefitting over 11 lakhs people.

Domex Toilet Academy — Bihar-specific (PSI, 2015–early 2017): Between 2015 through early 2017, PSI has trained 500 entrepreneurs and more than 130,000 toilets have been built. PSI also documented a related health-messaging outreach figure under its broader programme367 women were trained and over 700,000 people were reached with delivered messages to members of their communities on oral hygiene, nutrition, hand washing.

Cumulative toilets built (Campaigns of the World, as of 2016): Domex, being committed to the cause, has built nearly 70,000 toilets since 2015.

Global target (Unilever, stated ambition, not a confirmed outcome): The ambition of Domestos – or Domex, as the brand is called in some countries – is to help 25 million people get improved access to a toilet by 2020. No verified public information is available confirming whether this 2020 target was achieved for India specifically.

Bangladesh market (Bhumijo partnership, World Toilet Day 2024): It effectively utilised social media, generating 30 million impressions on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Category-level market context (not Domex-specific, India): Euromonitor data cited by theprint.in indicated overall category tailwinds during the Swachh Bharat period the national hygiene drive has spurred an 81 per cent jump in sales of concrete building materials and 48 per cent increase in bathroom and sanitaryware sales, according to Euromonitor International. The same analyst source noted a note of caution regarding direct commercial conversionThe sanitation campaign was anticipated initially to provide a bigger sales boost, but some companies have partnered with governments more as a social initiative than a business opportunity, she said.

Strategic Implications

Several strategic patterns emerge from the documented record, framed here as interpretive observations rather than additional factual claims.

Purpose and category-creation were sequenced before brand competition. The chronology of documented initiatives shows Domex investing in market-creation activities (DTA, affordable powder, school curricula) from 2014 onward, predating its direct competitive assault on Harpic in 2021. This sequencing is consistent with Unilever's own stated logic of using purpose-led activity to expand the addressable market before competing for share within it, as articulated in the Business Fights Poverty piece We take a long-term view that by facilitating the creation of new toilets and sanitation businesses, we will be stimulating a market for cleaning products in the future.

The DTA model functioned as a hybrid CSR-and-distribution mechanism. By channeling capital through a social enterprise (eKutir) and an international NGO (PSI), and by training micro-entrepreneurs who could plausibly become product distributors, Domex built grassroots infrastructure that served both a development goal and a latent commercial pipeline, as the CSRBOX description makes explicit In time, these small enterprises may also sell Unilever products. (Note: this specific forward-looking statement appears in the Business Fights Poverty source describing the DTA programme generally, not as a confirmed India-specific commercial outcome.)

The 2021 pivot to comparative, evidence-based advertising represents a shift from category-building to share-capture. Once category awareness around hygiene had been elevated by the pandemic, Domex's communication strategy shifted toward direct competitive differentiation against Harpic, anchored in third-party-verifiable claims (ISO certification), as described by medianews4uThe improved Domex Fresh Guard Disinfectant Toilet Cleaner doesn't just claim a 99.9% germ-kill formula but proves it through ISO-certified lab attestations. This suggests a strategic recognition that pandemic-driven category tailwinds (the "20m new households" effect documented for Harpic) created a finite window in which challenger brands could attempt to disrupt established loyalty patterns.

Government policy alignment was a recurring enabler across initiatives. Both the DTA (aligned with Swachh Bharat Abhiyan) and the COVID-19 disinfection drives (aligned with MCGM's civic disinfection priorities) demonstrate a consistent pattern of anchoring brand activity to active government programmes, likely amplifying credibility and access to public infrastructure (railway stations, civic wards) that a brand could not easily secure independently.

Measurement transparency varies sharply by market and programme type. CSR-oriented programmes (DTA) report tangible, unit-based outcomes (toilets built, entrepreneurs trained, people benefited). Brand campaigns (the 2021 Harpic-facing work, COVID disinfection drives) report far less quantified outcome data in the public domain for the India market specifically, with the Bangladesh Bhumijo partnership being a notable exception in providing digital reach figures. This asymmetry itself is a finding: it suggests that, in the absence of mandated CSR-style impact reporting, brand-campaign effectiveness data for Domex India is not made publicly available.

Discussion Questions

1. The Domex Toilet Academy combined social-enterprise partnerships (eKutir, PSI) with corporate seed funding to train micro-entrepreneurs in toilet construction. What are the strategic risks and benefits of a multinational FMCG company building market infrastructure through third-party NGOs rather than its own distribution network?

   
   

2. Domex's 2017 toilet cleaning powder was positioned explicitly for "bottom of the pyramid" households as a substitute for detergent-powder proxies. Evaluate the trade-offs a brand faces when launching a deliberately downscale product variant in a market where its core brand may also be pursuing a premium, evidence-based repositioning (as seen with Fresh Guard in 2021).

   
   

3. The 2021 "toilet war" campaign positioned Domex as a challenger directly contesting Harpic's category leadership using ISO-certified claims. Given that Harpic itself gained an estimated 20 million new households during the pandemic (per The Drum/RB data), assess whether a comparative-claims strategy is an effective way for a challenger brand to convert category growth into share gain, versus simply expanding the addressable market further.

   
   

4. Across the documented initiatives, Domex's purpose-linked programmes (DTA, Swachh Aadat curriculum, World Toilet Day partnerships) appear to operate on a different reporting cadence and metric set (toilets built, people reached, entrepreneurs trained) than its commercial brand campaigns (which report few public outcome metrics for India). What does this asymmetry suggest about how purpose marketing and performance marketing are measured and governed within a large FMCG organisation?

   
   

5. Unilever's stated global ambition was "to help 25 million people get improved access to a toilet by 2020," while no verified public information confirms whether this target was met for India. From a marketing governance perspective, what are the risks and benefits of publicly stating long-horizon impact targets for purpose-led brand initiatives when verifiable progress reporting may not follow at the same level of specificity?