Q] Mother’s Recipe recently forayed into the exotic sauces category. Can you tell us about the idea behind entering this category?
Mother’s Recipe is known as an ethnic Indian brand, so we decided to diversify our portfolio by launching the exotic sauces category. The idea was to offer more products to our consumers, and expand from Indian to some global non-Indian products. We had acquired Elmac Agro a few years ago. With that we also acquired the expertise of making sauces, which was utilized for launching the sauces category that we now have. It was a strategic decision to enter into the exotic sauces category, which is a very large market in the country.
Q] With so many different brands in the exotic sauce category today, what is your marketing approach to reach your target audience?
The sauce market is a large one with many players. Mother’s Recipe concentrates on creating awareness, driving engagement, and finally making conversions. We want to reach out to our customers where they are shopping, and make them aware of this new category. Basically, for this product, we want to start trials and allow our consumers to try the portions. We have a clear understanding of our TG, and we want to speak to them.
Q] What does your marketing mix look like?
Currently we are doing a mix of both TV and Digital. The frequency on Digital is much more, but spends are higher on TV. We allocate 60% of our advertising budget for television, and 40% for Digital.
Q] What is the USP of Mother’s Recipe exotic sauces?
A big USP of our product other than the innovative packaging is the fact that we don’t add any Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) in them, unlike other Chinese sauces. I think this is an important factor for families with children who want to avoid consuming MSG. This make the trials very important, and it is a large part of our marketing strategy.
Q] As a prominent food brand in India, can you tell us in what categories do you see yourself as a market leader?
We have a very good presence in the cooking space, which is the ginger-garlic paste category. We are the market leader in the pickles category as well. Pickles is quite an unorganised sector. I am only speaking about the organised sector because we don’t have any data for the unorganised locally packed brands. We are the only pickle brand that is available in every state of the country, and we have the largest cumulative market share as well. Regionally, we have a lot of competition in pickles, papad, and paste categories, but in actual sense we are the leader.
Q] Which Indian states would you like to aggressively enter for market expansion?
Right now, we are equally placed in North, South, East, and West. We do want to concentrate on West, because that is where we are headquartered, and our factories are located. So we would like to focus around our production sites. The category that we want to aggressively grow is definitely the recently launched sauce category. We see a huge potential in that category because we have created an innovation at an affordable price. The product is high on quality and trendy as well.
Indian chutney is another category that is steadily growing for us, and we want to focus a little more on this as well. In terms of markets, we would rather not expand on cities this year. We are just looking at more depth within stores, and do not want to expand to new locations as of now.
Q] What is the expected growth for Mother’s Recipe in 2023?
We’re looking forward to at least 30-35% growth for the overall brand in 2023. The projective growth for sauces is a lot higher.
