BENGALURU (Reuters) - Colgate Palmolive (India) reported a 20% rise in fourth-quarter profit on Tuesday, helped by price hikes and higher demand for its personal care products, mainly toothpastes.

Net profit rose to 3.80 billion rupees ($45.5 million) for the January-March period, from 3.16 billion rupees a year earlier.

Consumer product makers like Colgate Palmolive are seeing a rise in demand for premium oral hygiene products among urban consumers, who have higher disposable incomes, analysts said.

The toothpaste maker's sales rose 10.4% to 14.81 billion rupees.

Marketing expenses, which rose 18% on the back of new product launches and advertising campaigns, resulted in a 6.2% increase in total expenses.

"Rural markets continued to exhibit positive signs of demand recovery, growing ahead of urban," the company said.

Analysts, however, expect rural demand to show improvement by the December quarter as the monsoon typically boosts farm income.

Rival Hindustan Unilever missed quarterly earnings estimates but also said that a recovery in rural demand is underway.

Meanwhile, Dabur India posted better-than-expected results for the March quarter, buoyed by demand for its food products.

Parent Colgate-Palmolive raised the forecast for annual organic sales growth last month, banking on resilient demand for its highly-priced self-care and pet nutrition products.

Shares of Colgate-Palmolive (India) closed down 1.4% on Tuesday ahead of its results.

The stock has risen 13.5% this year compared to a 3% decline in the Nifty FMCG index.

($1 = 83.4953 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Navamya Ganesh Acharya and Ashna Teresa Britto in Bengaluru; Editing by Eileen Soreng)