Tata Consumer Products is boosting the distribution of brands like Himalayan bottled water and Tata Gluco+, as well as introducing new mass-to-premium products like oral rehydration drink.
Tata Consumer Products Ltd (TCPL) is expanding the distribution of brands such as Himalayan bottled water and Tata Gluco+, as well as launching more mass-to-premium beverages such as oral rehydration drink, nearly two years after buying out PepsiCo’s stake in NourishCo Beverages in order to gain a larger share of the ready-to-drink beverages market.
TCPL, a producer of salt-to-tea, bought PepsiCo’s investment in NourishCo Beverages Limited, a 50:50 joint venture between the two businesses, in May 2020. The joint venture was founded in 2010 with the goal of selling healthy and value-added drinks.
The brands, on the other hand, had a shaky start in terms of distribution and reach, trailing for years and being confined to just a few regions and towns.
“We wanted to offer our items in a lot more places since we’re probably only covering about a third of the market.” Driving distribution, and hence brand growth in new areas, is a crucial element of what we’re doing this summer, according to Vikram Grover, managing director of NourishCo Beverages Limited.
According to him, the company’s revenue more than quadrupled in the first three quarters of the year. In their December quarter financial presentation, NourishCo reported sales of Rs 72 crore.
In the previous 15 months, the firm has established a new distribution system for Himalayan, which has increased distribution by 90%. Grover claims that having a single parent firm has simplified decision-making and sped up procedures.
More goods are being tested in the market by the firm. Tata Gluco+ was trialled in a jelly formulation earlier this year. Following a successful reaction in the brand’s test phase, it expanded the fruit-based beverage brand Tata Fruski, which was originally introduced in 2017, to additional areas like as Odisha, Bihar, Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. In the December quarter, it introduced Tata Nature Alive, a mass-premium mineral water brand in a few regions.
Tata ORS+ will be available in a plastic bottle shortly.
Overall, the corporation intends to have a bigger presence in the bottled water market at all price points within its portfolio. “Aside from tapping into some of the other functional sectors in the market where Tata ORS+ operates, we also aim to make Gluco+ relevant to a wide range of new target groups.” “Grover went on to say that the firm has introduced a spate of new products in the previous year.
“We feel we’ve established a distribution and production platform, which we should expand with a bigger number of items,” says the company “Grover remarked.
The company’s manufacturing facilities have grown as well, despite the fact that it operates on an asset-light approach and outsources beverage production to third-party vendors