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Ice-cream cos offer new flavours to beat the heat
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Saturday, 19 May, 2007, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Dhwani Pandya, Mumbai
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esses a lot of action and excitement during summer as the companies pull up their sleeves to squeeze maximum sales in the scorching heat. The companies fight it out with hordes of promotional campaigns, advertisement and summer schemes to grab the customers' attention.
The ice-cream market is broadly divided into branded and grey market, the latter consisting of small and cottage industry players. The total market is Rs 2000 crore, of which the branded market at present is 100 million litres per annum valued at Rs 800 crore. The Indian ice-cream market is characterised as a highly seasonal market. While in winter sales fall sharply, during summer there is steep increase in sales.
This year major brands like Kwality Walls, Amul and Mother Dairy have launched a range of mouth smacking ice creams especially during the peak summer season. Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) recently launched Moo, a calcium rich ice cream with fun packaging targeted at kids. Apart from this, the company has introduced the Kwality Walls Selections range along with more flavours under the Cornetto brand. Sailesh Venkatesan, category head (ice-creams), HLL, said that the selections range would cater solely to the take-home category, which is slowly increasing. The range is launched in four flavours. With a market share of 10% currently, HLL is the second largest player in the branded ice-cream segment after Amul, which enjoys a whopping 37% market share.
R S Sodhi, general manager (marketing), Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), informed Food & Beverage News, "During summer months on an average sales increase by 30-35%. Our offers include items such as combo packs and 1+1 free etc. We have also launched a candy called Stamina during this summer." Amul recently launched a range of Probiotic and sugar-free ice-creams for the health-conscious and diabetics. Thus Amul has created an entirely new category of consumers who up till now were unable to indulge in delightful ice-creams.
Mother Dairy, too, has come up with two new flavours - O'Blast, an orange-based Ice-cream dessert and Toffee Twist, which tastes like toffee. Its ice-cream brand Chillz targeted at the entire family has got its first TV commercial with a new tagline of 'goodness inside,' Mother Dairy would also launch premium offerings in the takeaway ice-cream category. Mother Dairy has a range of ice-creams targeted at children like Lic Lolleez, Cool buddies. It also arranged a media blitzkrieg in the summer months primarily targeted at children. It has plans to increase the number of carts outside schools and also to hold contests and promotions offering goodies to the children.
With close to 30-35% of annual ice-cream sales taking place during the summer months, it's easy to see why the companies are stepping up activity behind its ice-cream promotions. In addition, companies are looking at more out-of-home points and also planning a presence in malls and other retail outlets. GCMMF is planning to extend its retail initiative 'Amul Parlours' from 800 to 3,000 across the country. Competitor HLL is also planning to extend Unilever's retail brand 'Kwality Walls Swirls' parlours in accordance with the growing number of shopping malls in India. Currently, HLL has over 30 Walls Swirls parlours across the country. Mother Dairy is also planning a presence in malls and other retail outlets.
However, the organised players have not been able to extend their distribution chain to small villages/towns due to the small size of the market and non-availability of cold chain. The Indian ice-cream market is still dominated by a large number of small local manufacturers and regional players. For instance, players like Pastonji in Maharshtra, Dinshaw's in Maharshtra, Vadilal in Gujarat, Arun Ice-creams in south India are enjoying a dominant position in their respective regional markets.
Pastonji, Baskin Robbins and Natural's ice-cream are some significant players in Mumbai as they have a wide and strong distribution network. While Pastonji has franchisee operations at Pune, Nashik, Jaipur and Mehsana, Natural's operations are restricted to Maharashtra at present. Pastonji has already launched new items in special shape and well decorated containers like magic swirl, sundae tubs, mini sandwich, mini sundae/swirl, (little friend) etc.
Bipin Sheth, GM Tech Pastonji Ice-Cream says, "This time temperature has risen considerably. In addition to this, the malls mania and the shopping pattern of the customer will definitely help us. We have been growing at 10-15% per annum and we have every reason to cross this figure this year."
With products like Real Matka Kulfi, Magic Roll, Chowpatti Kulfi and Golden Fantasy the company will introduce special scheme, where customers are supposed to collect fixed number of mascot and in turn they will receive surprise gifts from the company. Though like Pastonji, Natural's does not have any promotional plans for summer but it agrees to have a rise in demand by 15-20% during the summer months. Established two decades ago, Natural's ice-cream has positioned itself separately among the commercial ice-cream manufactures. It provides a range of fruit based ice-creams like custard apple, litchi, strawberry and mango which are prepared without any added additives and preservatives. R V Mallaya, director, Natural's ice-cream said, "In the next two years around 100 outlets will come across Mumbai. We also have plans to expand beyond Mumbai, however it is still in the pipeline."
In the last two years, Mumbai has been fortunate to experience the Gelato- an Italian brother of ice-cream, with a number of gelato serving parlours mushrooming in the city. These parlours are also ready to make competition fierce with their unique and innovative flavours which are launched during summer. Amore, started just one year ago, has successfully established itself as far as quality and innovation goes. So this summer consumer can look forward to a variety of new flavours and exciting offers to beat the heat with ice-creams.
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