Constant innovations and a slew of launches have helped Parle Agro remain contemporary. Now with Shah Rukh Khan on board as the new brand ambassador of the flagship brand Frooti, the company is chalking out aggressive growth plans. At the helm of it all is Nadia Chauhan, Joint Managing Director & Chief Marketing Officer, Parle Agro, who is steering the company’s growth to a food & beverage major
Q] You attended your first business meeting at age 11 and have been running the company with your siblings for the past decade. What are the challenges that you face as owner of the business?
I had a really early start in the business and my father kept me involved in business activities throughout. One of the biggest advantages of that is that you develop a sense of passion for the business. I never wanted to do anything else but be involved in the company and be able to both drive my father’s vision as well as lay down my own vision and drive that. Being an owner is exciting because you set a vision for your organization and drive the entire organization towards achieving that vision. It is challenging and I think these challenges drive me as an individual.
Q] Shah Rukh Khan is the new brand ambassador for Frooti. You have another celebrity endorser in Saif Ali Khan for Appy. How do you plan to leverage your association with Shah Rukh Khan?
One of the major reasons for having signed on Shah Rukh Khan for Frooti was that as an organization, we are targeting a growth of almost 50% for the brand. Frooti is a 27-yearold large brand, and a 50% growth target is very aggressive, considering the category is only growing at 20-25%, so we are talking about double the category growth rate for a brand that is as old as the category. To be able to achieve it, one has to have a very solid plan in terms of marketing and operational strategy, sales and distribution, infrastructure. All of that needs to tie in together to be able to deliver this kind of a growth rate. Keeping that in mind, we did see the effect Saif Ali Khan had on our brand performance last year, we decided that taking on a celebrity even for Frooti could add a lot of value towards achieving the brand’s growth plans.
Q] How do you see the fruit-based beverage category growing in India? What are your own growth expectations in this category?
The fruit-based beverage product category has over the last decade seen very high traction and has been growing at a very rapid pace. This is also because a lot of consumers in India are becoming more health-conscious and concerned about the products that they are consuming. They want products that are good for them than just synthetic-based products. This is a trend that has just started and it is going to continue to be a major one in the food and beverage category at large.
Q] The packaged water business is a competitive space and also very price sensitive, with not just national level players but also a host of local players in every market. How does Bailley stay ahead of the curve?
For brand Bailley, we have had a very different strategy. Originally, we had about three manufacturing plants for the brand across the country, but because of the high logistics cost, we were not able to compete with local players who were far more competitively priced. We changed our entire technical infrastructure, with a larger number of plants but smaller in size to be able to reduce our overall logistics cost and offer more competitive pricing. Today, we have 50 manufacturing plants for Bailley across the country. We continue to grow at a very aggressive double digit growth rate year-on-year and the number of plants continue to increase every year, helping us increase our market penetration, presence and market-share. Today, Bailley has become one of our largest brands and has really helped us create a dent in the packaged drinking water category. This particular organizational strategy that we have put together is really the one that has helped us drive this growth.
Q] You were instrumental in leading the company into the confectionary business and snack foods. How has this panned out for you?
The broader vision is to establish Parle Agro as a larger food & beverage company. We entered the food segment by introduction of confectionaries as well as the snack food brand Hippo about three years ago. We have seen phenomenal success with this particular category, whether it is our confectionary, which is Softease or even Hippo. We entered the snack food category with a completely new product which never existed in the country. That’s really Parle Agro’s key strength and this entire division has worked very successfully for us.
Q] What does your marketing mix look like? Are you focusing on the digital platform?
If I look at it purely from a spends perspective, the largest percentage of our spends, about 80%, would still be television but we also do outdoor, BTL activities and various direct marketing initiatives. We are a very progressive organization from a marketing perspective and are one of the very few companies in our segment that gives as much importance to digital as a platform. We launched the Frooti campaign on digital, same with Appy. People believe digital to be a niche medium, it is no longer a niche medium and I think that the more that brands get accustomed to this new medium and understand how to talk the language of digital, the better they will be able to do on this platform. They will really be able to create clutter-breaking communication and connect with the consumer more than ever before.
Q] What are your considerations before a product launch? What is the marketing mantra to build Brand Parle Agro?
One of the first and most important things that we look at is, “has it got the Parle Agro magic in it of being the first of its kind in some form or the other?” Our success in the Indian market has been due to two aspects – one, we believe that we understand the Indian taste buds quite well, and two, the fact that we provide consumers in India with experiences that they have not had before, which makes them constantly look forward to a new launch from Parle Agro. As far as our marketing goes, we always ensure that we have a very differentiated marketing campaign to be able to give us back as much as possible and towards building Brand Parle Agro. It’s about being focused on the brand values that we want to be able to build, which is about being a very progressive organization, being a company that is leading growth in the categories that we are operating in, being innovative. These would be the key values that we would like to build in.
#SRKlovesfrooti
the Frooti campaign was launched on twitter and within hours started trending with the tag #srKlovesFrooti . Chauhan explains that launching the campaign first on social media helped the brand hear and connect with the consumer directly and that the campaign has already paid off for the brand. she adds, “the best part of this entire association is that Frooti is iconic within the beverage category, shah rukh Khan is iconic in Bollywood. Putting these two iconic brands together is what the magic is all about.”
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