Ariel is quick commerce's #2 detergent, at ₹19 cr a month and a fifth of category value. It is in every dark store that stocks detergent, with nearly as many facings as Surf Excel. Each facing sells 30% as many packs. The reasons are on the shelf: the packs, the discounts and, on Instamart, the gaps.
Ariel and Tide take 32% of detergent value but 19% of units. HUL takes 45% and 55%. Rin, HUL's value brand, sells more packs than Ariel (13.7% vs 9.9%) on a third of Ariel's value.
Liquid is half the category's value on a third of its units, and that is where P&G is thinnest. Ariel has 22.7% of liquid against Surf Excel's 36.0%, and Tide is absent (2.8%). In powder, P&G leads: Ariel 18.8% plus Tide 24.3% is 43%, against Surf Excel's 34%.
On Blinkit, 48% of liquid detergent units are 1 L or smaller. Only 12% of Ariel's liquid value comes from that size; 72% comes from 4 L-plus. Powder is the same: 67% of the shelf's units are 1 kg or less, against 22% of Ariel's powder value.
At 1 litre, Ariel matic liquid is 7% cheaper than Surf Excel's and still sells a third as fast (67 vs 199). Price isn't what the small-pack shopper is weighing.
Ariel sells at an average 18.9% off, against Surf Excel's 11.8%. 43% of Ariel's value goes at more than 20% off (Surf Excel 15%; on Instamart, 76%). Ariel SKUs at 25%-plus off turn at index 52, and near-full-price ones at 46. Across SKUs, discount and velocity have a rank correlation of +0.15.
The only Ariel SKU that out-sells the shelf is a hand-wash powder at full price. 63 of Ariel's 102 listings sell at under a quarter of the shelf rate. They take a third of its store-days for 19% of its value. The 6 kg-plus matic bundles with free gel turn at 20–33.
Blinkit keeps the two level. On Instamart, Ariel is in stock 63.5% of the time against Surf Excel's 84.8%. The gap is concentrated in Ariel Matic front-load and top-load powders, which are out on 62% of store-days.
Applying each SKU's in-stock sales rate to its out-of-stock days puts up to ₹3.9 cr a month at stake. On Instamart alone that is ₹1.8 cr, more than the ₹1.4 cr Ariel actually sells there. Even at half the in-stock rate, the Instamart gap is ₹0.9 cr.
In Nagpur, Instamart keeps Ariel in stock 89% of the time. It is the one sizeable city where Ariel outsells Surf Excel: 31.7% to 29.8%.
Ariel over-indexes in Surat (135), Bengaluru (122) and Ahmedabad (120), and under-indexes across the Hindi belt and East. Delhi NCR is 30% of the category and sits at 94. Ariel doesn't lead Surf Excel in any city with ₹10 L a month of category sales or more.
Ariel's 7 bundle powders (free gel, free liquid) take 40% of its powder listings and turn at index 24. Its plain powders turn at 60. The bundles are discounted less (3.9% vs 21.7%), so the free gift is doing the work a price cut would, and doing it worse. It holds across the category: powder bundles index 31 against 117 for plain packs on Blinkit, and 7 against 90 on Instamart.
Ariel's brand-level discount on Blinkit stays between 14.4% and 18.7% every day (s.d. 1.1 pt). When Surf Excel's and Tide's SKU prices move day to day, units respond (elasticity ≈ −1.1, clear of zero). Ariel's response can't be told apart from zero (−1.06, 90% CI −3.0 to +0.8). The discount has become part of the list price.
Ariel's share of a store rises with its assortment instead of cannibalising itself. On Instamart it goes from 11.4% to 17.8% of store detergent value as the store moves from ~3 to ~4.5 Ariel SKUs, and it flattens after that. Zepto shows the same shape (10.4 → 16.4%). The typical Instamart store stocks 4.0 Ariel SKUs against 11.0 of Surf Excel.
Over seven weeks, Surf Excel's Instamart value share fell from 44.2% to 40.5%. Tide (+0.8) and smaller brands (+1.9) took it. Ariel stayed flat at 19–21%, as it did on Blinkit and Zepto. The share the leader is giving up goes to P&G's value brand, not its premium one.
The top tenth of stores produce 39.6% of Ariel's Instamart value, against 25.7% for Surf Excel, in both halves of the period. 40 of Ariel's top 125 Instamart stores are in Delhi NCR, the region where it under-indexes overall. Delhi NCR holds pockets where Ariel works; the gap is across the rest of the region's stores.
Every brand sells 10–24% more on weekends (Ariel 117, Surf Excel 114–118). The share of value in packs over 2 kg is 31.1% on weekends and 31.1% on weekdays. The weekend stock-up trip that the 4 kg jug is priced for doesn't show up on quick commerce.
Listed in ~100% of detergent-stocking stores on all three platforms, with 92% of Surf Excel's facings on Blinkit.
At 1 L, Ariel is 7% cheaper per litre than Surf Excel and turns a third as fast.
The deepest in the category, with no link between discount and velocity (ρ = +0.15).
91.0% in stock vs Surf Excel's 91.2%. Blinkit is Ariel's biggest platform and the velocity gap is widest there.