NEW DELHI: It is real!After a yearlong onslaught on their market share , volumes and loyal customer base, Patanjali has finally received the acknowledgement of the Goliaths of India’s FMCG industry.India’s Body Shop, Patanjali, has been a predator for most established FMCG firms, which are today battling with drop consumer demand and rising input costs. Hindustan Unilever , the largest FMCG firm in India, saw its volume grow at the slowest pace in five quarters when it reported its Q4 earnings on Monday.Colgate, whose sales grew at the slowest pace in 44 quarters, recently acknowledged the Baba Ramdev-led firm’s threat to its market share. That led brokerages such as Credit Suisse to downgrade Colgate Palmolive to neutral as Patanjali toothpaste has begun eating into its market share.Twelve months back, nobody ever thought that Patanjali would make the MNC FMCG giants India cower in fear.Patanjali was supposed to knock the Emamis and Daburs of the world, not HULs or Colgates, said Pankaj Sharma, Executive Director, Equirus Securities.“If you look at the past 12-18 months, most of the times, when we have discussed Patanjali, the potential impact highlighted has always been maximum for Dabur and Emami, because the product portfolio is somewhat similar,” he said.“But,” he continued, “what we are seeing today is very different; the maximum impact on volume growth in the FMCG space has been on players like Hindustan Unilever and Colgate.”Ian Cook, global CEO of the US multinational Colgate-Palmolive, last week for the first time acknowledged the competition in the herbal segment in India and said Colgate plans to launch newer products in the 'natural' space, an ET report said.“Recently, the only trend that all of us were speaking about was the huge competition from Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali. Actually one did not expect Patanjali products to make such a big dent on some of the MNC FMCG names,” said Gaurang Shah, VP, Geojit BNP Paribas.“Not they themselves are endorsing the threat that lies ahead in the form of Patanjali for some of their products,” he said.Colgate is yet to announce its quarterly numbers for the March quarter, but HUL has and it was not pretty.“Volume growth reflects the increased competition in the industry from the entry of a new player as well as stress from two consecutive years due to poor monsoon,” said Ravi Shenoy ,VP - Midcap Research, Motilal Oswal Securities.Shenoy believes that entry of this “new competition” has dented the company’s pricing power and net sales growth during the quarter.“Pricing too has seen a negative delta with net sales growth of 3.5 per cent, which is an indicator of the heightened competition resulting in the passage of lower input costs to the customer and possibly downtrading by customers,” he said.