Daybreak - At Fogg deodorant’s owner, KKR’s PE math clashes with family-business wisdom

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Founded by the Patel brothers, Vini Cosmetics built Fogg into the country’s top deodorant brand with its no-gas formula, and high-margin pitch. In 2021, global giant KKR swooped in with a $600 million deal, valuing Vini at $1.2 billion—the biggest private equity play in Indian FMCG.But the partnership never clicked. The founders refused to fully step back, while KKR struggled with the quirks of a brand-led business in a market it didn’t quite understand. Advertising budgets were slashed, rivals like Denver surged ahead, and new launches flopped.Today, Vini is still profitable, but its margins are shrinking, and Fogg’s dominance is fading. And even as the founders return fully into the picture, it's future looks foggy at best.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. In an Ahmedabad office, Darshan Patel was attending a go-to-market strategy meeting presented by Accenture analysts when he suddenly stopped the midway. Hold on. First, let me introduce Dershani.

to you. He is currently the founder of personal care company Winnie Cosmetics, the brand that owns fog deodorant. You remember the Bina Gas Walla Spray Dio? Now Darshan is known as a brand builder. He's the guy behind iconic brands you must have heard of, like move, crack, itch guard and dermie cool. All of them are from Paris pharmaceuticals, his other family business that he runs with his brother, Deepam Patel. Now, back to the PAPT. Basically, Patel had stopped the analyst, to ask for a piece of paper. Then he began jotting down numbers on that paper, much like any danda guy who runs a small business.

He went on to pass the paper around the room, sharing the calculations he'd made. He had basically fixed on a sale price for his product that would keep a 70 to 75% margin. An executive at this meeting recalled that Patel had openly questioned the need for such presentations. And a sales manager told the ken that they're a typical Gujarati founders,

and they've always run their businesses this way. Until 2021, when everything changed. The Patil Brothers sold their stake at Winnie Cosmetics to the global private equity firm KKR. KKKR acquired a more than 50% stake in Winnie for a little more than $600 million, valuing the company at a whopping $1.2 billion. This is the biggest fun infusion by a private equity player in Indian FMCG to date. The deal left many scratching their heads. A former executive said that KKR bought.

it at a very expensive price, almost 35 times Winnie's then-ebidda. He added that apparently the profitability of the company was close to rupees 200 crore then, and they bought it on the assumption that Winnie had done well pre-COVID. But the real problems began after that. The thing is, there was no clear-cut handover between the founders and KKR-backed new management. A fogg executive said that the founders still held a 10-person stake. They also happened to be very close to early investor Westbridge, which holds another 23%. So they basically continued to have unsaid control.

But the KKR-backed management wanted to go its own way and in that process took some calls that didn't sit right with the founders. This left the PE giant flailing. It wanted to control the business but it also wanted the founder's know-how. And this uneasy combination has led to a state of chaos that Winnie Cosmetics is finding difficult to recover from. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host Rachel Virgis, and every day of the week,

my co-host, Niktha Sharma and I will bring you one new story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Wednesday, the 8th of October. Now, for an FMCT brand to stay relevant, it has to launch new products every year, even if some don't really work out. A consumer analyst told us

that what's important is staying top of mind with consumers. Unfortunately, that's the same. where Winnie failed. Fog was launched in 2011. It broke out as a no-gas-all-perfume product sporting the tagline Bina Gas Walla Spray. Or in English, a spray without gas. They overtook market leader acts within a year.

But since then, the company has struggled to recreate the success. Now, it did launch three other brands around 2018. Awesome for perfumes and glam-up and white tone for creams and powders. But not one of them took off. Why? Well, you see, KKR's hold on the purse strings was always a little too tight. A former Winnie executive even said that while glam-up was a great product with potential, it was never really invested in.

In fact, when senior executives at the firm asked Darshan if he wanted to launch something new, he'd say, and I'm quoting here, if they give me money, I'll launch it. If I don't have the money, where will I launch? That's not even where the conflict ends. The thing is, two executives told us that Vinny also wanted to be a personal care platform. much like the direct-to-consumer company Mama Earth. A sales executive told us that they even considered acquiring other brands. For instance, Vinnie was in talks to acquire colour essence, a cosmetic brand back in 2023.

It was also eyeing Eva, a personal care brand known for its range of women's deodorants. But neither deal really worked out. A KKR analyst told us that the problem was basically that there were too many stakeholders to manage. And the CEO at the time, Vishal called, defer to KKR. which rubbed the founders the wrong way. Eventually, after all of that, in FY25, the revenue ended up staying flat while profits improved slightly. An employee and an ex-employee told us this was because KKR slashed costs, including management

and consultant expenses. But margins still fell from about 65% to 58%. According to one retail manager, that's roughly a rupees 80 to 90-grower hit. And, to make things worse, fog, its crown jewel, had also lost. While it still leads the 4,000-crow-rupeze deodorant market, its rival Denver has climbed from a 4% to 13% share in just a few years. An analyst put it this way. Winnie lost the plot to Denver.

Denver basically copied Darshan's business model and then sped ahead by getting Shah Ruk Khan to advertise their brand. And of course, behind Fogg's slowdown is a confused leadership landscape. More on this in the next segment. Gora Treyhan, the Asia head of investments at KKR first wanted to invest in Winnie Cosmetics when he was at Global Investment firm, TBG. An executive at KKR told my colleague the Ken reporter Noha that when he later moved to KKR, buying Winnie became his first big bet and his first deal at the firm.

Of course, he wanted it to be a success. But the timing was tough. COVID hit soon after and crushed demand. To make matters worse, it took KKR nearly eight months after the accident. to bring in a professional management team. Finally, in February 2020, it appointed former PepsiCo executive Vishal Call as CEO. With this, the Patel brothers were expected to seed control. But that never happened.

And KKR didn't push it either. Instead, the two sides maintained an uneasy coexistence. For the new management, though, the top priority was to show Trehan growth. A former Winnie executive told us that KKR analysts would often crash sales meetings and discussions. At any given time, there'd be at least two KKR analysts at Vinny's Mumbai office. The former KKR analysts we spoke to insisted that's how PE firms typically operate. But at Winnie, the firm's focus on sales ended up backfiring. A former manager pointed out that distributors usually hold two to three months of inventory.

But at the time, Winnie was carrying seven to eight months' worth. That was an unfortunate rookie mistake. KKR's push led Vinny to offload stock to distributors and counted as sales. But as the same manager explained, when a company floods the market more than demand, prices inevitably crash. And that's exactly what happened. A rupees 160 deodrant was suddenly selling for nearly 50 bucks less. Of course, that hurt the company's bottom line. And while KKR wanted growth, it also wanted profitability. Q, its next mistake. KKR cut marketing spend from 21% of revenue to just 8%.

This was a fatal move for a deodrine brand, which is usually built on advertising. The thing is, KKR had no FMCG experience in India. And so it underestimated how brand-driven the business was, and it also wanted to sideline the founders. This model obviously couldn't last. Eventually, Vishal Kahl and his team left in late 2023, and the founders resumed control,

but this time with KKKR's blessing. Their first move, bringing back their old Winnie team. You see, as a person close to the PE firm told us, KKR tried an approach, realized it didn't work and then reset its strategy. The firm realized it made no sense to ignore Darshan and Deepam's experience. After all, they were both prolific entrepreneurs who had launched more than 15 brands. So it only made sense to hand the reins back to them. But by then, Winnie was already in a difficult spot.

Stay tuned. Gorov Trehan's approach was completely at odds with the founders. A former executive told us that Trehan was insistent that Binnie's sales numbers look good, even if only in the short term. Management was pushed into doing whatever he wanted, including giving out heavy discounts just to push stock. The founders, on the other hand, believed in selling products at their own price. A sales manager told us that their priority was less sales numbers and more solid margins.

Now, eventually, KKK did ease up a little. It recalled its consultants and cut down its frequent visits through weekly calls. But it still reached out to senior executives for updates. A former executive even told us that when the founders wanted something done, KKR would cross-examine the team. But when prompted to confront the founders directly, they would back off. In fact, in the meeting rooms, both sides would stay very civil. If you weren't already in the no, you'd never even guess there was so much tension. Now, after calls departure in 2023, KKR brought up.

in Unilever veteran Krishna Sundaram as Winnie's new CEO. But not much has changed. The founders still call the shots and every big decision needs their sign-off. And what about KKK's goal of turning Vinnie from a traditional to a digital first company? Well, it hasn't really taken off, mostly due to few new launches and limited marketing. Now, a person close to KKR told us that Vinny did roll out some new products post the acquisition. One was Realman, a body spray, and the other was Closé, a razor brand. But according to a senior executive, most of the groundwork had already been done under Darshan,

and the stock was just lying around. In other developments, this June, the company launched a new campaign for Fog New, a Gen Z targeted variant of Fog. But it's barely a new product, and the fact is that the original brand has been stagnating. A former KKR analyst told us that the company was built on traditional media and cater to a particular audience. So basically, when markets move to digital spaces, it just could not keep up.

So now, the company could go one of two ways from here. Double down on fog or focus on new launches. But unless something changes, Vinnie's best days might be behind it. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings.

full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Varghees and edited by Rajiv Sien.