Richa Arora comes across as a marketing professional who knows her onions or rather her peppers. Britannia's marketing head is excited about a new brand called Pepper Chakkar that she is steering through the hard as hide biscuits market. Arora has a reputation of intimately understanding customers across India and leading new product development, tailored to a variety of palates. She is also in charge of developing the appropriate marketing mix, and matching offerings to market needs. Arora was previously with Balsara Home Products as marketing head and with FCB Ulka as strategic planning head. Understanding consumers, for her, has been a natural progression from an interest in understanding people. And her perspectives in the area of consumer behaviour come from consumer interactions across diverse categories (two-wheelers to fruit juices to home appliances to lubricants to cars to toothpaste) and brands such as e as Frito Lay, Whirlpool, Tropicana, BPL, Panasonic, LML. An Alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and the London School of Economics, Arora's interests, besides include photography with 'light' as the subject.
Over lunch at she discussed with Indiantelevison.com's Taro Wanvari about the new Pepper Chakkar and the marketing philosophy at Britannia. Excerpts: |
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Pepper Chakkar seems to be the new excitement at Britannia – Could you talk about this? |
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So are you going to market this as a health product? The idea is very modern. In its form it's a biscuit, but actually it's a snack, light, tasty, and combined with the targeting the young, the concept of What et eez? We are creating the fun and excitement around the product. What it eez is more than just the catch-line; it is the heart and soul of the product and the brand, because What et eez? creates intrigue around the product.
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Why What et eez? Are you targeting the vernacular or the rural market?
English has been left by the British for us to corrupt. That's how we talk. This how the youth in cities such as Delhi or Bangalore would speak. |
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What is the size of the 50 50 brand – in volume and turnover terms, how much does it add to your bottom line? We don't want to look at tomorrow's market with yesterday's eyes. We don't want to look at what 50 50 was. We are looking at the snacking market and the opportunity for us. We need to look at the size to the opportunity rather than what was. The snacking market as a conservative estimate is about Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 Billion) including the unorganized sector. That's a fairly large opportunity for us to tap. |
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Why is Pepper Chakkar a sub-brand of Maska Chaska, and not a separate brand by itself? What are the targets in terms of volumes and turnover for this product?
With regards to targets we have pretty ambitious targets and it would account over a period of time for a significant percentage of our 50 50 sales. As we are rolling out the products, we are actually revising our estimates upwards. As I said that we really don't want to look at the market with yesterdays' eyes. We do believe that this a product that can take then brand 50 50 forward to the next level. |
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This is one of the first new products you've rolled out in 2005. Could you share some details about future roll-outs? The size of this market is actually impossible to estimate, but, just to give an idea about potential for this product, in addition to the box of mithai, to the box of dry fruits and the box of chocolate and the local and imported box of biscuit, the fruit juices that have gotten in, Real fruit juices and Tropicana fruit juices along with the local juices this is another opportunity that this brand is tapping. In the basket of gifting there are four-five products that go in and our objective is to make biscuits as a part of that.
In the first year of launch of Greetings, we've succeeded and over the years to come we are going to build on this. You may not have seen this because the visibility, and a large part of the effort was focused more in the north and west, not so much in the south. North and west are the big markets for Diwali. Gifting is not such a big thing in the south and the east.
But, if you go to Lajpat Nagar Delhi, during Diwali, you have visit these shops set outside which sell right from early morning to midnight and after. We travelled to Bombay, Delhi, further north into Harayana to gauge the response. Bombay was great, but nothing compared to Delhi, which is the heartland for gifting during Diwali. In the South, some moderate trade in the Food Worlds and such shops here maybe. We've also had another launch focused on Tamil Nadu for the Marie Gold Double. We've had a fair number of launches this year, some of them have been localized, but the Pepper Chakkar is a big national launch.
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