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Mother Dairy steps up its national presence

July 21, 2016

Point-of-Purchase talks to Subhashis Basu, Business Head - Dairy Products, Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt Ltd, on their ever-increasing products range and extending national presence with a special focus on regional tastebuds.

Mother Dairy has diversified into all possible milk and dairy products over the last few years. The exotic product folio has travelled way beyond the ubiquitous milk booths and found a strong foothold in both MT and GT. Point-of-Purchase talks to Subhashis Basu, Business Head - Dairy Products, Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt Ltd, on their ever-increasing products range and extending national presence with a special focus on regional tastebuds.

Mother Dairy has moved far beyond a trusted milk brand to offer some exotic variety of products. Tell us about your current product range and thoughts behind them?

Even five years back, Mother Dairy was primarily reckoned with milk booths specially in Delhi-NCR region. Today, we have not only diversified into most functional milk products but improvised on them. For example, we did not stop launching various types of curd but brought some regional delights like Tadka Chhachh (a north Indian delicacy) or Mishti Doi (a fabled dessert from Bengal). We even introduced some of the most gourmet range of ice creams like Western Classic etc. We have started extending the scope of the brand since the last three and half years.

Please elaborate on your dynamic interplay of marketing that brought about such positioning of your brands?

You see, even when we had our undisputable brand positioning as a milk brand, we did not have such strong foothold beyond Delhi-NCR. Our extension plan rolled out in rest of north, then west, east and finally southern part respectively. One also has to ponder that we had the luxury of milk booths in Delhi-NCR but not as much in rest of India, so the penetration had to happen through visible activations in GT and MT.

What also happened was when we started working on local palette through our new products, we already set ourselves aside from our competition. We used different marketing language for different brands. For example, when we talked about our newly-launched cow milk variant, we spoke more about purity, care and nurture, whereas our exotic flavor of ice creams spoke about preppy and youthful side of the brand. Also, I would like to cite the example of our Dahi range. While researching on packaging and positioning of the brand, we realized that the entire Dahi industry in India is more manufacturer-driven than being consumer-driven. Hence we tied up with world-famous packaging agency Landor and re-worked on the consumer side of story.

How did these reworked brand positioning translated through GT and MT?

With GT and MT, I would also like to add e-commerce. You will be surprised to learn that we are growing at a speed of 10% on e-commerce. We are expecting that e-commerce will contribute 2% of our entire turnover in another 2 years though we are still treating it as an evolving channel.

When we introduced our 200 ml tetrapack of milkshake, it started doing extremely well and we realized a huge scope of its take-home pack. Today, many MT outlets are successfully selling its 1 litre pack. Similarly, in ice cream, which is a small category and extreme relevance at only stand alone outlets, when we launched ice cream cakes in thermocol boxes, it started doing good through MTs. Currently, we are focusing on the chiller sections of Modern Trade. Also, while all our products earlier were either in chillers or in freezers, we have launched our first range of ambient products (dairy whiteners, creams, milk shakes etc). We are already seeing positive result in those shelves.

Will there be any exclusive retail format other than Mother Dairy milk booths and Safal outlets?

We are not looking at any exclusive retail format. However, whenever there will be advent of new formats, we will be a part of them. For example, we are present in all renowned institutes and office premises through our kiosks and we are constantly upgrading our facilities. We have recently launched something as innovative as vending machines for fresh lassi, a product which has a shelf life of only couple of days.

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