 "Ramesh Chauhan brings fizz back into beverages")
The cans are brightly coloured and have been created to draw attention to their unusual flavours. After 23 years, Ramesh Chauhan, chairman of Bisleri International, and best known as India's cola king, has re-entered the soft drinks market with a carbonated beverage called Bisleri Pop.
While soft drinks are second nature to the septuagenarian, who created India's most popular cola brand Thums-Up only to sell it later, along with Gold Spot and Limca, to Coca-Cola in 1993, he is taking no chances with Bisleri Pop.
Available in four flavours - spicy, pina colada, fonzo and limonata (which Chauhan insists is different from the lemony drinks around) - Bisleri Pop has been aggressively priced. At Rs 10 for a 200-ml and Rs 15 for a 300-ml bottle, it competes not only with offerings from Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, but also the rash of small, regional players dotting the landscape.
Its 250-ml cans are competitively priced at Rs 20 for the more aspirational consumer. While mini cans from PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are available in the Rs 15-20 price bracket, they have less quantity in them. PepsiCo launched its 150-ml Pepsi can last month priced at Rs 15, while Coca-Cola will unveil its 180-ml can priced at Rs 20 shortly.
Chauhan says Bisleri Pop fills the need for differentiation both in terms of products and flavours. "We took eight months to develop this after studying the market carefully," he says. "In a segment where the incumbents are strong, the challenge was to create something that could stand on its own feet."
While there may be room for a new soft drink, in a market dominated by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, how easy will it be for Chauhan to make headway?
The two multi-national giants straddle the price and flavour pyramid in the Rs 14,000-crore domestic soft-drinks market, dominating the list of top ten brands.
Chauhan is taking a wait-and-watch approach. "Our first task would be to gauge initial response to our product. For now, we are rolling out Bisleri Pop in six metros: Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai. We will expand to other cities once the initial launch phase is completed. Right now our attention is on these markets," he says.
Lessons from the past
This is a shift from what he did when he launched Urzza, an energy drink, in September 2014. It was a national roll-out, backed by a television, digital and outdoor campaign.
Chauhan was also taking one of his boldest bets then - stepping into a new category and targeting its core audience of urban youth, both in terms of aspiration and positioning. Urzza was pushed into kirana stores, hotels, restaurants and canteens-channels not targeted by energy drinks; they are known to be strong in the pub-club circuit.
Urzza also lacked an immediate link with the brand like Bisleri Pop does with the parent brand, Bisleri, right there in its name. Chauhan admits Urzza taught him that it was better to stick to a familiar brand name rather than create something new altogether. In a saturated market, it doesn't always work, he says.
Urzza struggled to make a mark following its launch, resulting in Chauhan having to silently withdraw the product once the initial stock was exhausted.
"We need to get the positioning right with Urzza. Once we get that in place, we will re-introduce it back in the market," he says. He claims this will take about four months to achieve.
Bisleri Pop's initial advertising campaign is low-key too. Unlike beverage brands, which are launched with a bang, Chauhan has opted to stick to billboards and point of sales in the offline world and a digital campaign in the online space.
"I don't think we will get into television at this stage. Let the brand create a space for itself before we get into the next phase," he says.
By adding Bisleri to the name, Chauhan hopes to play to his strengths. "The idea of using Bisleri for the fizzy-drink foray was to help us use the parent brand's reach to make inroads into retail outlets. So shop-owners will not be reluctant to stock Bisleri Pop even as they pick up Bisleri bottled water," Chauhan says.
To start with, Bisleri Pop will be available at 25,000-30,000 outlets. While this is a fraction of the nearly 1 million outlets that Bisleri bottled water is estimated to reach both directly and indirectly, the number will increase as demand grows.
Chauhan has pressed four of his own plants in Mumbai, Delhi, Rudrapur and Bengaluru to produce Bisleri Pop. "We are looking for co-packers in other locations such as Kolkata and Hyderabad. While Bengaluru can take care of Hyderabad, we will need co-packers in markets such as Kolkata and as we scale up in the future," he says.
