Everyone, welcome to the company's Investors and Analyst Call. I'm Zeal from the company's company secretarial team. Thank you for joining us. Today, we will begin with presentation by the management of the company on the company's performance, results, strategies, and business outlook. We have received questions submitted by the participants at the time of registration of the call. The management will address the questions received after the presentations. Let me introduce our presenters for today. We have on the call V. Kumar , Managing Director of the company, and Srividya Srinivasan, incoming Chief Financial Officer. All participants are placed on mute, and participants can participate only in the listen-only mode. Please note that during the course of the call, the presentation and information shared by the management may include forward-looking statements. This may include words, phrases, numbers that set forth anticipated results based on management's current plans and assumptions.
Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in those statements. The company cautions investors that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that actual events or results may differ materially from those statements. This could be because of factors that affect international businesses and global economic conditions, as well as matters specific to the company and the market itself. The company undertakes no obligation to update these statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except to the extent required under law. With that, I now hand over to Kumar for the management presentation.
Thank you, Zeal. Good afternoon, everyone. As always, it gives me immense pleasure to have another opportunity to interact with each and every one of you. On behalf of Procter & Gamble Hygiene and Health Care, I want to extend a warm welcome to all of you. Let's look at what we have lined up for today. I'll start first with some perspective on the results and then move on to take you through our strategy, as well as some of the work that we've done through the year. Thereon, we'll hear from Srividya Srinivasan, who's our incoming CFO for the company, on the long-term perspective as well as insights into the operating environment. First things first, let me start with the financial results for the year.
For the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, your company reported sales of about INR 4,300 crore, flat versus the same period last year. We were able during this period to invest back into the business but at the same time also deliver profit after tax of about INR 850 crore. This is up 19% versus the comparable period last year. We do know that the results have been mixed. This year, however, was marked by targeted investments with continued focus on innovation, on strengthening our go-to-market, and as a result, we are very confident that these steps will inflict sustained, balanced growth and position us for long-term competitiveness in these categories. Having talked about the results, it's very pertinent now to talk about what's happening in the external environment. It's very dynamic. It's evolving constantly. I'll start first with media transformation or fragmentation.
It's much more challenging today to get the consumer's attention, to educate them on the benefits of our brands in today's cluttered media landscape. Consumers, as you would know, have more sources of information. There are more sources of influence. There are many more ways to engage or oftentimes disengage. Consumer attention is one of the most valuable currencies around. The second big change is inflation. Inflation is all around us, across food, energy, Healthcare, and so many more areas of everyday spending. This is starting to take a toll on the consumer. As we know, the Indian consumer has always been very price-conscious. One may call them price-conscious, but in reality, they actually are value-conscious. They are discerning, they are prudent, and they exactly know where do they want to invest their resources. Therefore, affordability or providing the right consumer value remains an evolving concept for us.
The third big change around us is the retail landscape. The consumer's path to purchase has gone through a massive transformation. Today, we have quick commerce, social commerce, agentic AI, and whatnot. Retailers are becoming media platforms. Media platforms are becoming retailers. That world is fast merging. Access to assortment, access to a wider portfolio is more democratized than it ever was. In summary, the consumer path to purchase is no longer linear. This means our execution has to evolve to meet those specific consumer needs. While everything around us changes, what does not change is the focus and our own commitment to the integrated growth strategy. You've heard about the integrated growth strategy before. Let me expand it a little bit. With our strategy, we want to provide a portfolio of daily use products in categories where performance truly drives brand choice.
We want to deliver superiority across the five vectors of product, packaging, brand communication, retail execution, and value. We want to enable the superiority by driving productivity across buckets and with a very long-term perspective, such that we can fund superiority and at the same time continue delivering our financial results to the expectations of shareholders. We want to disrupt constructively the environment we operate in so that we continue to stay ahead and win with the consumer. Finally, at the foundation of all of this, we want a fully engaged, enabled, and excited organization that wakes up every morning eager to serve the consumers in the country. As a company, we will continue to invest in creating superior propositions for our consumers and our retail partners.
We will have relevant innovation, fantastic, powerful brand campaigns across every touch point, and we will strive to continuously improve our execution across all channels and platforms. We have demonstrated that when we execute all of these elements of the integrated growth strategy well, we can drive balanced results and create value. Our focus is to double down and raise the bar on execution of this integrated growth strategy. Having talked about the landscape, having talked about the growth strategy, let me now take you through some of the highlights of how we are actually bringing the strategy to life. I'll start first with the portfolio. We said we will play with a portfolio of daily use products for the two categories we operate in in this company, Feminine Care and Personal Health Care.
For both the categories, we are committed to deliver superior products to delight our consumers and give them offerings at multiple price tiers. We certainly believe that in these categories, performance plays a very important role in the consumer's choice. Hence, we will focus on providing irresistible superiority to our consumers. The Feminine Care category, unsurprisingly to a lot of you, should be and is a very high involvement, high engagement category. We strive to serve our consumers with products that offer them superior benefits so that it improves their lives. In turn, the consumers, we hope, will reinforce their trust in the brand so that this work continues to remain a market leader. We have brought in propositions that upgrade loved products to raise the bar on consumer delight across benefits, across the range, and across sizes.
I'll share a little bit more on the portfolio as we go along. Moving on to our Personal Health Care portfolio. It's a comprehensive portfolio offering a diverse range of products that address unique needs for each consumer in the category. Healthcare is a deeply personal space. We take utmost care in designing every part of the portfolio to alleviate various concerns for our consumers. How do we do that? We do that with superiority. When the consumer is more discerning than ever, we need to deliver consumer relevant superiority every day, every week, every month. We need to put the consumer at the center of everything we do. We do this to ensure so that our brands continue winning. They have leadership shares in the market that they operate in. Our focus on superiority, though, is not new.
We believe in delivering irresistibly superior propositions to consumers and retail partners across the five vectors of superiority that I spoke about a little while earlier. We also know that we need to adapt our execution in light of the changes in the external landscape. I'll probably talk you through a few examples of how our brands have actually done this. I'll start first with Whisper Period Pads. To consistently delight our consumers while addressing their needs, we created a truly one-of-a-kind product in Whisper Period Pads. Whisper Period Pads provides 360-degree leakage protection. It features enhanced absorption cues. It has a very soft, breathable waistband, which is designed to absorb very heavy gushes. This fiscal, we focused on amplifying the communication around Period Pads, on educating our consumers on its benefits when it comes to fem hygiene and worry-free period care.
Through very detailed consumer work and through scientific understanding of menstruation, we understand that period flow is experienced differently during the day and differently during the night because of gravity, amongst other things. We also understand that women face frequent leaks during period nights. They're constantly stressed about it. What they want is peaceful, comfortable sleep during periods. To alleviate such leakage concerns and provide Bindazzz Nights to our consumers, we have been upgrading and bettering our Whisper Nights portfolio across price ranges so that we provide the consumer absolute delight. The new soft top sheet enables our consumers to remain worry-free. It could be about leaks. It could be about skin discomfort. It allows them to sleep peacefully at night, something that they look forward to. In response to the evolving consumer preferences for advanced cold and cough relief solutions, we recently launched Vicks Cough Syrup.
It signifies a beautiful synergy between science and tradition, with a loved non-drowsy formula that works effectively on both wet and dry coughs. Vicks Cough Syrup represents our commitment to offering superior products to consumers within the cough and cold category. At the same time, we are very excited with our sleep portfolio, with our Vicks ZzzQuil Natura Sleep Gummies. It has now recently been upgraded. It combines five milligrams of melatonin to help you fall asleep naturally, with 50 milligrams of natural ashwagandha that calms the mind and body. With the aid of consumer sensing, we learned that many consumers sought a higher melatonin dosage. We also continued to sense a strong affinity to natural ingredients when it comes to Healthcare products. The new and improved ZzzQuil combines the best of both worlds, melatonin and natural ingredients, so that we can provide the best consumer experience.
Given the ingredient back upgrade, we now wanted to ensure consumers can see these details upfront on the all-new Vicks ZzzQuil Natura packaging. We took the opportunity to make the packaging more effective, preventing concerns like moisture trapping in changing weather conditions. The new packaging boasts of moisture-proof features. It makes it resistant to extreme weather conditions. We continue finding meaningful ways to communicate the unique offerings and benefits of our portfolio. With compelling advertising, something that has been a hallmark of the company. A great example is from Vicks VapoRub. How many times has it been that we've heard consumers say, "When my child has cold and cough, nights are the absolute worst. My child's sleep gets disturbed multiple times. I've tried so many remedies. Nothing provides all-night relief.
I feel so helpless as a parent, and I have to wake up multiple times at night." This became the unlock, and the team brought to life an all-night relief benefit with Vicks VapoRub. I'll now let you have a look at the communication. We will probably come back to the communication in a bit. Looks like the audio has a little bit of trouble. We will come back to it in a minute or two. Even as we are working on the right communication on Vicks VapoRub, our Vicks Cough Drop portfolio has been capturing very innovative, culturally relevant moments. I hope some of you have already seen this on your social media feeds.
The first one was our first concert integration, where the artist, known for a very high specific singing pitch, was able to alleviate throat irritation or khich-khich, as we like to call it in Vicks, with the trusted Vicks Cough Drops. The artist then went on to voice our iconic Vicks jingle along with the live audience, something that became a big hit. The second integration that you will see soon is again, one of a kind with a very famous stand-up comic. Before delivering another set of the stand-up comedy, the artist resorted to trusted Vicks Cough Drops. The seamless integration with the artist resonated very well with audiences, with most of them taking to social media to share positive engagement. Can we play the Vicks Cough Drop? Can we first actually play the Vicks VapoRub advertising and then come back to the Vicks Cough Drop assets?
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As you can see, we've tried to bring to life all the insights that we get from consumers through traditional advertising media as well as through social media. Another such example of compelling communication is on Whisper Period Pads. We started with a consumer insight. As part of our regular consumer work, we heard concerns that today's girls felt they couldn't be their best selves during their period days. There was a constant fear of stain, leaks, and the worry to change at regular intervals, which came between their active lifestyle and packed schedules. We saw that today's girl needs period protection that can keep her up with her pace.
Keeping this belief at its heart, Whisper launched this new communication with a resonating catchline and brought it to life in association with celebrated Indian cricketer Jemimah Rodrigues to spotlight Whisper Period Panties, a revolutionary modern-day period care solution that is designed for comfort, confidence, and everyday movement. Can we play the video, please?
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In line with the strategy to stay connected with consumers where they are, we did realize that women today are more informed, more vocal than ever before, and there is an increasing representation in the workforce, which significantly shapes consumer trends and expectations. We spent a lot of time studying consumer habits and testing ways to engage them in conversations about Whisper. We learned about their inspiration, about their concerns, about some myths, anything that could be a barrier to consumers making informed purchasing decisions. To overcome this, we launched a 360-degree communication plan that seeks to address all of these concerns for her across different consumer touchpoints via expert voices. The credible voice which we trust is that of a gynecologist, someone in a relatable life stage. For example, a new mother experiencing very heavy period flow, or a relatable active girl next door.
Such credible, trusted voices across multiple platforms help reinforce our messaging on the product and help the consumer make the right decision. As a result, Whisper Period Panties has sold 10 crore units in the last year. A huge number. We know that the marketplace and the consumer path to purchase, as we spoke a little while ago, is evolving really fast. Retail execution is way more complex and way more heterogeneous than it ever was. Our teams carefully curate how our brands show up when you, me, or millions of consumers around the country start their shopping journey. We aim to provide a consistent, informative, and easy-to-access experience to consumers, no matter which channel or what destination they shop for our products from.
We have been working to not only deepen our distribution, at the same time, to also improve our visibility and how our brands show up to consumers. In summary, we want to ensure that we are available to every single shopper when they want to shop for us and where they want to shop for us. Moving on to our third strategy element, a very important one, productivity. This gives us the fuel to invest in superiority, to mitigate cost and currency headwinds, and to drive margin expansion. Very volatile recent times have only underscored the importance of a robust, always-on productivity program that can help us navigate tough times with minimal disruption to business operations. We've extended our focus on productivity improvement with every single business unit building not just one-year, but multi-year savings master plans. We have significant opportunities to drive efficiency across the value chain.
The good news is that the company has already been on this journey. Just in the last year, the company was able to deliver INR 86 crore of savings via very targeted productivity and savings programs. Another important part of the integrated growth strategy, constructive disruption. This has been the foundation of how we've approached work. We see it as fundamental to become more effective, more efficient, while at the same time setting standards for the consumers so that they can, in turn, trust us. This translates into creating new trends, technologies, and capabilities that will truly shape the future of our industry. As always, we remain focused on being the change and in driving constructive disruption for our industry in such a way that we deliver better outcomes for each one of our stakeholders.
For example, to be able to stay ahead in this fast-evolving world, we have been investing in data and platforms to drive operational efficiency and accuracy. Just imagine millions of data points that come from different sources in different formats, different timestamps, and very different levels of quality. Bringing all of them together, organizing them in very meaningful ways is an effort that has lasted years. Because of this, we've been able to create something that has proved usable, actionable, and real-time so that we create value for the organization. An example of this is our consumer research data. This helps us identify consumer needs better, faster, and in a much more nuanced way. In addition, our operational data is unparalleled. P&G has deployed one of the most standardized systems of record-keeping compared to any of our industry peers.
The most significant benefit of all of this is our ability to maintain a common data definition across the entire expanse of the value chain. This, in turn, creates massive agility in the ecosystem. With just these two capabilities, we have been able to optimize our go-to-market capabilities as well. We are able to integrate data points from internal and external customer sources, and we can bring in interventions like smart assortment that has already driven double-digit portfolio optimization. With the data collected and standardized, our AI factory then provides a platform approach to our digital products. It empowers our teams to build tailored capabilities on common workbenches versus developing independent solutions. An example is our AI-led automated availability checks. It ensures seamless availability of our products for each one of our consumers wherever they want to shop for us. This, as you would appreciate, is a very fast-evolving ecosystem.
As a company, we are very confident in our ability to stay invested and stay ahead so that we can create value for all stakeholders. As I spoke before, the foundation of all the work that we do is the organization. It is the most fundamental part of our integrated growth strategy. After all, it is our people who deliver and execute each element of the integrated growth strategy. Let me take an example of how P&G is committed to providing a comprehensive variety of wellbeing solutions tailored to individual needs. Our aspiration is to create an environment where every P&G employee can be at their very best and can feel empowered to achieve very high goals inside and outside work. P&G supports employee wellbeing through four key areas. The first is physical wellbeing. This includes preventive care, fitness, and easy Healthcare access. The second one is mental wellbeing.
This includes rest, very important, resilience, and mental health support. The third one is financial wellbeing. This includes education and resources for long-term financial security. The last one is work and life wellbeing. This includes tools and programs to balance personal priorities with professional responsibilities so our employees can show up at their very best, both outside work and inside work. P&G's programs offer a very wide variety of tools and resources to help employees to effectively manage their energy, navigate through challenging periods of work, and establish the right balance between work and personal priorities. The goal is for our employees to be the very best version of themselves every single day. We also extend our efforts, as you hopefully well know by now, to the communities where we live, work, and operate in.
We are extremely proud of the fact that this year, P&G Shiksha, our flagship CSR program, proudly celebrated a very significant milestone of impacting over 1 crore children from underserved communities. This milestone represents far more than scale. It reflects 1 crore individual journeys where learning gaps were identified early and addressed before they could become barriers to growth. What you see on your screen now are some of these stories of this impact. I'll take the opportunity to play the video of one of them.
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Every one of these 1 crore stories is what gives us the pride in continuing the program. We'll also now take a look at the video of the Shiksha program.
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Every time I watch the video, I get goosebumps. I'll probably add a bit of perspective on how the video came about. As a lot of you are aware, P&G Shiksha started even before CSR programs were mandatory by the Government of India. It started as an initiative to build schools around the country. Over years, in line with the needs of the country, it moved to looking at learning gaps, something that exactly falls in alignment with the National Education Policy of the government. We actually moved on to focus on prevention and remediation of learning gaps so that we can create a nation that learns without any labels. Over the last few years, through P&G, through Shiksha, P&G has focused on raising awareness on learning gaps and in remediating them. This video actually was part of that effort of erasing the learning gap.
We launched the anthem in partnership with JioHotstar, that if we can truly bring out the aspect of a child who's first hesitant and worried about being left behind, then moves on and gets transformed into a confident, resilient, and progressive child. I do hope you got to see the message as well. Many of our efforts, be it our brands, our community impact programs, or our organization initiatives, have been recognized externally at prestigious forums, this gives us confidence and pride to move on. This only motivates us to raise the bar and to double down on our efforts to better serve each one of our stakeholders. On that note, let me now hand over to Srividya Srinivasan, our incoming CFO, for the next few segments. It has always given me joy to be with you like today. Thank you.
Thank you, Kumar. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Srividya Srinivasan. Effective July 1, I'll be stepping in as the CFO for this entity. It's a pleasure of mine to be with you this afternoon. As you saw in the presentation, Kumar spoke about our integrated growth strategy and how it is making a difference to our business results. That growth strategy has been our integral part of how we actually delivered results over the decade. You also saw the 19% structural profit growth delivered for the past year, while sales remains muted. At this point, I would like to reflect the results over a longer period. Let me also take some time to share with you our view on the recent trends and outlook for the industry. Of course, many of you sent over the questions, I will address it in the Q&A section.
As I mentioned, the integrated growth strategy is working for us. We have delivered consistent mid-single-digit sales growth over the past decade, about 10 years. At the same time, we have delivered a compounded annual profit growth of 8%. At the same time, becoming more asset efficient, as you see here, three times in the return of equity. Our net profit margin in the same time has increased by 200 basis points. If you see the past 10 years, there were fluctuations in the macroeconomic terms as well. That was really built behind our strong productivity program across all spend areas. You will see this theme actually happening year-over-year. One other way to look at this growth is also in the absolute numbers.
Our absolute sales and profit have both approximately doubled over the past 10 years, as you see in the charts here. It demonstrates our ability to consistently deliver the superior execution of our strategies. Coming to the shareholder value. The results that you saw in the previous two charts, both on the top line and the bottom line, has helped us actually deliver the shareholder value through a record 30 years of consistent dividend payout. Our share price has more than doubled, reflecting the same consistency on the business results. Over the past 10 years, the company has delivered returns of over INR 3,000 per share to its shareholders in the same period of that same decade where we talked about the results. You can see the value that we grow in the top line, bottom line, of course, results in the shareholder value creation as well.
Looking ahead, taking a glimpse into what does really the growth means for the long-term perspective. We want to set ourselves up for the long term. We are here for the long-term growth and sustained value creation. We will remain focused on being consumer first to win disproportionately with the consumers and continuously improve the margins and fueling superiority, and being choiceful to play the long-term game. The macroeconomic context may provide short-term headwinds too. We remain committed to long-term value creation, as we have demonstrated in the last few slides. Very quickly on the sales, we want to grow ahead of the market, continue to improve the margins, resulting in the value creation that we want to see for the next decade to come.
I also want to take the opportunity to talk a bit more about the external landscape and how it is evolving over the period. The Indian economy continues to grow stronger amidst all the global peers. Nonetheless, it's important to acknowledge the slowdown versus the past three years. As you see on this chart, at 6.5% growth estimated for the year, India will grow well within the past 10-year trend. With steady government and private investments and economic indicators like tax collections, there are reasons definitely to be optimistic. One must keep an eye on the evolving global trade policies and commodity prices as recently as we have seen in the past quarter, which will impact inflation and, in turn, impact on the cost of goods produced.
Overall, we see positive outlook on India's medium-term growth prospects, but we continue to monitor the macroeconomic risks and the near-term uncertainties arising from it. Speaking of demand, within our industry, the FMCG industry, trends continue to evolve. While non-food inflation continues to stay below RBI's medium-term target of 4%, consumer consumption trends are still shifting and evolving. While rural consumption continues to be higher than the urban consumption, we are seeing a softening trend driven by uptick in the inflation rates in the more short-term period if you look at it in the past three to six months. We are also monitoring the West Asia crisis closely, as that will have an impact on the commodity prices as well. Looking at the near term, we anticipate some challenges to continue.
We remain confident in the dynamic and integrated nature of our strategy to help us navigate the difficulties and continue to serve the consumers to drive the sustained top and bottom line results. You're very much aware of this integrated growth strategy. We have repeated it only year-over-year, I will not double-click on each one of them. In the Q&A section, we will cover sections of it with the examples from both the categories, Feminine Care and Healthcare. Let's go to the Q&A session, the most exciting session. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share the questions with us in advance and also being on the call today. Based on the time we have, we will try to cover as many questions as possible.
As you are all well aware, we will refrain from sharing information that may be price sensitive or confidential to protect the competitive advantage of our company. With that, let's get right into it. The first question comes from representatives of Club Millionaire Financial Services, who asked us about the industry growth for sanitary napkins and Vicks and details of the market share gains. Let me start with some numbers. Feminine Hygiene is growing at about 7%-10%, whereas the Healthcare categories we play in are growing at about 2%-3%. In both categories, it is important to note that growth has not been linear. Healthcare growth rates have been volatile this past year. Monsoon was good last year, knock on wood, category growth got an influx with that. This year, you know how you feel. With the delayed monsoon, growth rates are getting impacted.
I'm not sure about you all, but me sitting here in Mumbai, I would like actually some more rain showers right now. For Feminine Care, growth is coming from varied segments. Irrespective, Whisper remains the market leader in Feminine Care, Vicks remains the leader in all the Healthcare segments we operate in. Either be it rubs, cough drops, inhalers, or cold tablets. Next, let's take the question from the representatives of Cerity Partners. They asked, "Why is the company not innovating or launching new age, high-demand products in the Feminine Hygiene segment despite changing consumer preferences and rising market opportunities?" Thank you for your question. Changing consumer preferences is what we are tackling every day. As you would agree, we have a long-standing legacy of driving innovation in the Feminine Care category, I'm going to go back decades in time.
From pioneering pads with wings in the 1990s, to the ultra-thin pads in about 2000. From being the first brand to openly talk about periods in advertising, to devising the first inclusive period awareness curriculum in partnership with UNESCO, and so on and so forth. We have consistently led category development and consumer education. As a market leader in this important category, we remain committed to advancing innovation, breaking barriers, and improving the experience for consumers. For us, innovation is not just about launching new products, but also continuously investing in the existing lineup to meet that, as you call it, the evolving consumer needs. We have brought in propositions that upgrade loved products to raise the bar on consumer delight across benefits and sizes. You heard about some of that in Kumar's presentation. At the same time, we are also spearheading a new segment with Whisper Period Panties.
Our Whisper Period Panty portfolio offers 360-degree leak protection. With its superior absorption, the protection against the heavy gushes, and a soft, breathable design of the product, it delivers comfort, confidence, and peace of mind throughout the day. The product is specially designed for the woman of today who is on the go and seeks a solution that suits her needs. Through a size-inclusive range, we continue to ensure that more consumers can access solutions for their individual needs. This has been the focus area for the last few years, I'm happy to share that we are driving category growth on this new segment. In fact, Whisper is the undisputed leader of the Period Panty segment. That gives you a flavor on the couple of innovations that is happening in the very recent past.
Let's jump to the next question from a retail investor who wanted to understand our strategy to deal with increasing competition in the Healthcare business. Healthy competition is never a bad thing. The winner of that is always the consumer. We remain focused on being consumer first, which means we should be the ones to understand the evolving consumer trends, the fast also a deep consumer understanding of what the trends are, what their needs are, then take those insights and convert into the winning propositions. This has been our formula to grow. It has served us very well. What needs to and has continued to evolve is how we bring these ideas and innovation to life. We spoke in the presentation about the fragmentation in the market.
That is the media landscape that is fragmented or the retail landscape with the ever-evolving digital commerce and quick commerce business now, that is also getting fragmented. This is a real phenomenon. It is happening. It is right before us. We are evolving not just our portfolio, but also our media mixes, communication toolkits, retail partnerships. Data is more powerful ever than before. How do we really take the data partnerships also to the next level? Eventually, our strategy remains constant. A portfolio of daily use products in categories where performance matters. Superiority across product, package, communication, retail execution, and value. Productivity across every cost bucket in our P&L. Constructive disruption to stay ahead of the game. An organization fully engaged, enabled, and excited to serve the consumers. Let's look at an example in our Vicks portfolio of how this is really coming to life.
Actually, you saw the new Vicks VapoRub spray, right? That all-night cough relief. Let me also give you some background to that. The Vicks VapoRub portfolio has been trusted by generations of Indian families. However, we stepped back to reassess what more the portfolio could offer. We went and spoke to lots and lots and lots of consumers and learned that nighttime sleep disruption was the number one torture test for those tackling cough and cold symptoms. I am sure you would agree with me, all night sleep will be a great one during that cough and cold. However, no existing product got this job done well. The team took on the challenge to design a proposition that could deliver an all-night time relief. This category idea gave way to the big idea, all-night relief for uninterrupted sleep.
From upgrading the formula that can provide the all-night relief to step changing communication and media plans that can holistically drive awareness about the upgraded benefit, strengthening the promotions and availability during the monsoon seasonality, we were able to deliver amazing results. If I can give you some numbers, in the past six months, even if you look even beyond that, past nine months and 12 months, Vicks VapoRub was delivering double-digit growth, growing share, and driving a turnaround in new user acquisition. Over time, we have also seen brand equity metrics go up significantly. As you can see, when we power up all parts of the strategy, we drive well-rounded growth. This is where one plus one plus one plus one is greater than five. Moving on, we have a question from the representative of Bay Capital India Fund.
It's a thorough question, let me read it out. Over the last five years, there has been a significant slowdown in the revenue growth of the business while the category penetration remains slow. This has happened even while we have consistently done ad spends, as well as expanded distribution and launched newer products. What has been the issue in your view? Thank you for that. We need to acknowledge that the category has undergone significant shifts in the last few years. The category landscape is evolving as we speak. Let's start with the consumer. Consumer needs and habits are evolving at an unprecedented rate. The landscape is evolving, too, with a very high degree of competitiveness. Despite these changes, we continue to play our part in driving the category growth and investing in evolving segments.
As consumer needs and lifestyles evolve, our investments are being channeled towards that innovation, communication, and really driving and delivering superior consumer experiences to remain the preferred choice for consumers. That actually shows up in the share gains in these evolving segments, which in turn is driving the category growth. That gives us the confidence in strengthening our strategy and the long-term prospects of the category. Over the last five, six, seven, eight years, if you look at it, category penetration in urban India or younger consumers have grown many, many times. Whisper has been in the driver's seat of actually driving that part of that growth as well. Our focus remains on identifying the most promising growth opportunities and ensuring that we are all well-positioned to win in those spaces.
As category leaders, we have the privilege, but that also comes with the responsibility of deeply understanding our consumers. We continuously engage with consumers to understand their evolving needs and their preferences and their purchasing behaviors. These insights help shape our innovation pipeline, portfolio strategy, and communication approach. Let me illustrate this with an example of the Nights portfolio in Whisper. You saw snippets of this in V. Kumar's presentation about how our upgraded our Whisper Nights range. We learned that even among the consumers who are using the period hygiene products today, the incidence of using pads at night is about half. Reasons are plenty. As we started to educate consumers on how blood flow changes at night due to gravity and offered them our delightful nighttime period protection products, we were rewarded with their love and loyalty.
The need for even superior brand protection at night comes from evolving lifestyle and habits. A comfortable sleep ensures that fear of leakage and disrupted sleep don't come in the way of our consumers seizing the day. Really, a comfortable day and comfortable night is what everyone is looking for. We also recognize that many consumers of today engage with brands differently. It's not only the linear TV media that we were used to early on. They seek authentic, relatable conversations, even in highly personal categories such as Feminine Care. To bring the superiority of our Nights portfolio to life, we are partnering with credible and relatable voices, as you saw in the videos in the presentation of what V. Kumar shared, and it is to educate consumers about its unique benefits and reinforce the promise of that all-night sleep. You may seen glimpses of this in the presentation.
An interesting nugget, Whisper's Instagram channel is one of the most followed platforms in India dedicated to period care. This consumer understanding has not only enabled us to build the Nights portfolio, but also establish leadership within the segment. Today, half of all pad users choose our Nights portfolio, and we continue to lead the segment. Whisper Nights is growing ahead of the sanitary napkins category penetration and is the most distributed Nights brand in India. Similarly, we are leading the growth in Period Panties segment, as we talked earlier, and even in emerging channels like quick commerce. As consumer expectations continue to evolve, our commitment remains unchanged to engage meaningfully with consumers in ways that resonate with their lifestyles, preferences, and needs, and that drives the category growth through innovation and superior consumer experiences. Going to the next set of questions. This is all focused on the growth rates.
Mudit Minocha from M3 Investment asked us about the projections and what came in the way of the intended growth rates. Vinay Shetty from Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance asked us on the moats PGHH has in respective segments that are difficult to be replicated. Similarly, Ronak Shah from Equirus Securities asked us about specific levers give us the confidence in sustaining double-digit earnings growth over the medium term, volume recovery, premiumization, market share gains, pricing, or operating leverage. While all these levers are important, sustained growth ultimately depends on the ability to win with the consumers. All these levers actually help to win with the consumers. That remains our central focus areas. We are in a deliberate phase of investing behind understanding the consumers, reaching and engaging them, and innovating curated solutions for them, as you saw in the Whisper Period Panties and the Whisper Nights examples.
There, we recognize the consumer needs, what is their expectations, and how can we really bring the products that meet their needs. There is some more work to be done, and that is exactly what we are focused on. I also want to spotlight that our ambition remains to be balanced growth, driven by that integrated growth strategy and an ability to raise the bar to deliver irresistible superiority to our consumers. Being consumer first while doing that is in fact is our moat. What does that really mean? Products that delight the consumer and get the job done. It's as simple as that. In packages that provide noticeably better benefits to consumers. They become aware and learn about these products and what are all the offerings that we give in our portfolio via the superior brand communications.
This comes live to in stores where you touch and feel the product or via online, which is becoming a predominant channel today, with superior retail execution, and delivers superior consumer value at a price that is considered worth it across price tiers where we compete. In short, this is really the recipe for the success. This year has witnessed many new launches and upgrades, all in service of that better consumer experiences. We remain confident in the long-term potential of the category, which is expected to continue growing at a healthy rate of mid to high single digits. As we play the role of the category leaders, and what is that role, right? Our ambition is not only to participate in that growth, but also to help shape and accelerate it through consumer-centric innovation and category development.
I hope that gives you a little bit of a perspective of how we are looking at our portfolio and also looking at how the category growth development ought to come. Keeping with the same theme, we have representatives from securities investment management asking us if we are optimizing for margins where we should be optimizing for growth. We understand why it may seem so after you have seen the results for this fiscal year. Let me assure you, the top line has remained flat after we have invested back in the business. Either that investment comes from the product, package, communication, because these are the metrics that help us drive demand generation. This has been possible only because of the systematic savings program that we have put in place. In fact, this also delivered a strong bottom line growth and margin expansion.
We will continue to look at all needed vectors to invest in and productivity programs that become the fuel for these investments. This work has begun already and the focus parts of the portfolio are already seeing green shoots. Achieving enduring growth and creating value necessitates a balanced growth strategy. Without our save to reinvest program, we cannot adequately invest in superior products, effective marketing or engaging advertising or landing the right consumer value. All of that which will help us drive the user growth. This in turn will drive the volume growth. That in turn will drive the category expansion. At the same time, it offers a degree of protection against the market volatilities, like the times that we are in today. Ultimately, consumers seek value, not just low prices.
By consistently offering compelling propositions at the right value, we earn their preference. That is how we build the brand loyalty. The next set of questions includes the following questions. Asheesh Pandey from Union Bank of India Privie, who asked us about why revenue has not grown this year and has been sluggish for the last three years. Mudit Minocha from M3 Investment asked us a similar question but going back the decade. Krishnan Sambamoorthy from Ashika Institutional Equities asked us about two or three key reasons for the relative slowdown in Feminine Hygiene revenue growth in recent years compared to the past. In the earlier slides and through the couple of questions, we briefly touched upon this. Let me take this opportunity also to double-click on some of the changes and how we are tackling them. First, consumer needs and demands are evolving at an unprecedented pace.
The distinctiveness and the diversity of the consumer cohorts, their needs, aspirations, habits, are far more pronounced than before. This, coupled with the dynamic shifts in the media and the retail landscapes, necessitates a fundamentally different approach and accelerated pace of change compared to the historical practices. That is where we have to evolve as well. We are listening, we are learning, we are adapting, putting the best foot forward. What I really like in this is it also provides us opportunities like never before. We are already working on different ways we can tap into those opportunities. Looking in the Feminine Care category, the representation of women in the workforce is at a historical high. Same with the representation in higher education. This underscores the need for far superior products and longer-lasting period protection.
We are grabbing this opportunity activating our Nights and Panties portfolio, which offer the best standard of protection within the category. We are market leaders in both and continue to grow the category. The second significant change that we have seen is also the competition intensity. There are many regional players now. There are D2C players have entered the category. In fact, it is estimated, probably in the last decade, there are about 50 new players that have entered the category. As I said before, healthy competition is always good for category growth. It also keeps us always engaging and connecting with the consumer of what the need is. The pace of activity is also unprecedented. This means the consumer is not just spoiled for choice, they are facing a lot of clutter, with similar-looking packages, similar-looking communication.
That is where the work cut out for us is really to find out what is that the consumer finds a product that makes sense for her and works for her, how do we take that conversion and translate into the lifelong loyalty. We are one of the most trusted brands in the country. Therefore, we are focusing on how we stand out from that clutter and provide them with the best possible period protection. Better product than any other product that they have used. Better communication, building that awareness via the information that we can share than any other source. Sharp and targeted media mix to reach them wherever they are, the right go-to market. Not just making the products available, making it available where they shop and stand out at the point of sale.
We created the nights period care segment about five-ish years ago. Today this is one of the most competitive segments. This is also one of the fastest-growing segments. Whisper has been driving this growth. Let's also take a look at Healthcare example. The category has been seeing a decline for many quarters post-COVID. The good news is we are seeing signs of recovery in the more recent quarters. Like we shared earlier, we are watching out for monsoons to determine how the next season will be. Irrespective, we have been constantly introducing meaningful innovations to the market across the different subsegments. They have performed very well. Sometimes this has taken significant shifts in how we look at our portfolio. For example, take a look at our cough drops.
Cough drops has been there for a long time. What we did two years ago, we revamped the portfolio to add two times the actives and increase the size of the lozenge to meet the consumer's need of a better, bigger product that drives longer relief. We made this new and improved product available at the right value for the consumer. This new initiative also led to renewed energy and activations on social media, where people started talking about cough drops again. This is driving the best-ever engagement and sustained excitement. To illustrate, we are growing offtake in double digits this year. We are growing volume and volume share on a past three-month level. At the same time, we continue to have a more robust rubs portfolio. There are parts of the portfolio that cater to distinct needs.
Vicks BabyRub to Vicks Xtra Strong Rubs, really giving an expanded portfolio in rubs. From the examples that I shared between the Feminine category and the Healthcare category, you will see that having a robust portfolio that is consumer-driven, communication that brings the benefit to life, and a targeted go-to market plan with the right value, we grow the category. This is the formula, this is the recipe needed for sustained growth and long-term value creation. Moving on. Anurag Dayal from PhillipCapital asked us in context of the rising competition in female hygiene segment, about how we should look at the segment growth and our market share. Vinay Shetty from Bajaj Life Insurance asked us something very similar. That is indeed an important question. The category has continued to grow. In fact, the category has grown over 100 times in the last 30 years.
This year itself, category is growing at high single digits. How we look at the category growth has to evolve. We talked earlier about the evolving consumer landscape, retail landscape, media landscape. That is evolving, we have to evolve, too. In the Feminine Care category, it is not just about the cloth users moving to pads, but also occasional pad users increasing their usages and occasions, or how often and how consistently they use, all in the service of best possible hygiene and care during the periods. In the last question, we talked to you about the competitiveness has increased significantly with many regional or the DTC players entering the category. At the same time, we are also realizing that the category needs to be looked at in different segments.
Be it different benefits like soft product users, night-time usage, or different sizes, what that needs of the consumer ought to be. That means there is no one-size-fits-all solution that can be offered in the Feminine Care portfolio. While we remain category leaders overall, as well as in some of the fast-growing segments, we have continued to invest in our propositions to delight our consumers. At the same time, we continue to look at the opportunity that's in front of us to serve the cohorts of yet unserved and underserved consumers. Shifting gears now, Krishnan Sambamoorthy from Ashika Institutional Equities asks about the performance of period panties this year. I can be all day here talking about the period panties. Let me give you a quick snapshot of what it has done for us. It is an exciting sub-segment that has been doing exceptionally well.
In the earlier presentation from Kumar, you saw glimpses of that as well. Let me share a little more about how we really came into this truly one-of-its-kind product. This product has been designed for the woman of today. The working woman who is active, who has long hours at work coupled with long commute time, who is looking for that gold standard of period protection. Or the young girl who has just hit the puberty and has a busy school schedule and does not want to worry about frequent change of pads. Additionally, with the young consumers, the category penetration is a few points higher than overall. Therefore, the opportunity here is not just introducing them to the Feminine Hygiene as a category, but also providing them with a 360 daily leakage protection that alleviates any concerns.
It's a classic example of translating consumer insights into a winning proposition by designing a product that offers Whisper's best leakage protection. In fact, many consumers believe this is the best all-round leakage protection they have available in the market. We are bringing this to life with a renewed media plan, a social-first communication strategy, and an iconic loud brand ambassador in Jemimah. I am sure she needs no introduction. One of the most courageous choices we took is to actually compare the protection a pad gives to what a panty gives. One might think it's outrageous for the market leader of the sanitary napkins to say so, but that is exactly what Jemimah, our brand ambassador, says in the copy you saw a while back.
That should tell you the kind of belief we have in what Whisper Period Panties has to offer, and we are putting our weight behind this segment. Happy to share Whisper Period Panties are already gaining significant salience across channels and consumer cohorts. For example, one in four consumers in quick commerce who buy period products are picking panties, and Whisper Period Panties is the number one choice in that segment. Whisper Period Panties have been growing consistently over the last two years. You heard this before, just this fiscal year, Whisper Period Panty sold over 10 crore units and tripled the business. This has been truly heartening for us. Let's jump now to a question from Vinay Shetty of Bajaj Life Insurance on the status of operating margins of the company. This year, we improved structural margins by a point.
On the top line, we have driven that margin expansion with the innovation in the premiumization to enable consumers to trade up in line with their evolving aspirations, as you saw in the Whisper Period Pants or the Bindazzz Nights example. At the same time, for the bottom line, cost savings across the multiple areas also provides significant opportunities. Productivity is in our DNA. That is what we will continue to do in order to improve the margins. I can say for certainty, productivity is embedded in our ecosystem. It's embraced in every part of the operation. It is a more effective and efficient way of operating, all in service to the consumers and the customers and the shareholders every single day. This includes constantly assessing our supply chain mix and sourcing programs.
We are now actively working with a multi-year view on savings and productivity to ensure long-term perspective on margins continue. This not only ensures we have the fuel to invest back in the product, create that demand generation, distribution in the ever-evolving retail landscape, but also provides us with air cover during the macroeconomic volatility in the service of the balanced business growth, just in the times as we are living today on the volatility. Let's take a question from the representative of Bay Capital India Fund, who noted some frequent changes in CEO as well as CFO roles over the last 10 years, asked, how should one think of this as a long-term shareholder if the management team's tenure in this business itself is short-term oriented? We understand why this is an important question.
Let us reassure you, our strategy has remained constant despite leadership changes. Like I said before, you have heard of the integrated growth strategy from us over the years, for several years now. The long-term business growth strategy supersedes the individual-driven priorities. We have line of sight to innovation for three to five years at any given point in time across all the categories and the segments that we operate in. Of course, as leaders come in, they shape how the strategy gets executed for the better. How it can be brought to life in the ever-evolving market context. Let me also try to address the question behind the question and throw some light on how the talent management principles work in P&G. We deliberately plan careers and assignments with the intent to give our employees a diverse set of experiences to build holistic skills.
I can talk that from my own example of having that multiple experiences before becoming the CFO of this entity. These diverse skills actually shape better leaders for the business as well as the organization. In fact, as you may know, many leaders who have led the company as the CEO or CFO are today leading various global or regional parts of the company. We continue to be a grow from within company. While this could mean changes in assignments every few years across different businesses or different markets, this gives us an unique opportunity to ensure the continuity and given the same consistent thread in terms of our philosophy across leaders. This strategy is what enables the company to have a strong leadership succession plan at any given point in time.
Let me now take some questions that come up in the context of the macroeconomic volatility. Ronak Shah from Equirus Securities asked us, how should investors think about the allocation of future cost savings between margin expansion and incremental investments in advertising, innovation, and category development, particularly if competitive activity intensifies? Meenakshi from The Hindu Business Line asked if the West Asia conflict increased cost pressures for the company, and if we see inflationary pressures impacting consumer sentiment. Vishal Punmiya from YES SECURITIES also had a similar question. I want to highlight how our industry-leading supply chain is benefiting P&G as we work through the current global supply chain and the commodity cost increases that we have seen related to the West Asia conflict. Yes, cost and availability are both very volatile.
As an example, crude prices has gone up anywhere 30%-50% since March, and so is derivatives like resins and plastics, which has also gone up by about that 50% range. Despite the significant disruptions, we have not gone out of stock or made compromises on product performance. This has only been possible due to years of deliberate investment, business continuity planning, deep supplier relations, and the hard work of our teams. We know that the volatility is likely to remain in the near term, but we are working every single day to mitigate those risks. At the same time, we will continue to activate our savings programs. Priority is also to secure supplies and the products be available on the shelf and ensure continuous supply of products to the consumer. At the end of the day, we will take a balanced approach to growing our business.
We had a few more questions. Vishal Punmiya from YES SECURITIES asked about key areas of investment by the parent company. Meenakshi from The Hindu Business Line asked about the future investment outlook and manufacturing footprint expansion plans. Representative from Club Millionaire Financial Services asked us about the buyback of shares. You all know this, please note, we will refrain from answering these or similar questions and hold back on sharing anything that is unpublished, price sensitive in nature, or confidentiality to protect the competitive advantage of our company. That brings us to the end of the questions. We hope this has been meaningful for you, hearing the examples across the Vicks portfolio and the Whisper portfolio. Some of you sent in some recommendations as well. I can definitely tell you we have gone through the recommendations on working on it and to put it to life.
At the same time, I also like to really thank you for sending us the questions in advance and taking time also to be on the call today. We look forward to doing this again. On behalf of the company, thank you for your continued support. Have a great day. Have a great afternoon. Thank you.