Dalmia Continental to up market share by 700%

Bengalis using olive oil for regular cooking "" might sound weird but that is the target of Dalmia Continental Private Limited (DCPL), V N Dalmia's flagship company.

DCPL, which ventured into the olive oil market only last September, is planning to capture more that 25 per cent of the market share of about 2000 tonnes by this fiscal end , which would be a jump of more than 700 per cent.

Owner of the Leonardo brand of olive oil, DCPL imports Leonardo Extra Virgin Olive Oil, best suited for dressing and flavouring and Leanardo Olive Pomace oil , the cooking grade oil from M/s Nicola Pantaleo, Italy for the Indian market.

Focus and emphasis of the company would be on quality, taste and nutritional value of the product.

The company however is positioning itself as a supplier of olive-oil in the edible oil segment, unlike other players who import the oil as massage oil.

"Macher jhol" would taste best cooked in mustard oil , but we want to bring olive oil as the next best alternative, said Narayan Rajagopalan, president and COO of the company in an exclusive talk with Business-Standard.

It would take atleast 3 years to convince the common mass about the usability ,taste and nutritional value of olive oil as the knowledge about the product is limited.

Rs 10 crore-communication budget has been envisaged to create and sustain awareness about this product through advertisement and innovative brand building schemes like "cookery show" where all the items would be cooked in olive oil , he added.

The company has plans to invest Rs 100 crore over next 5 years for infrastructure building in this region.

Apparently it looks much costly compared to other edible oil, but in case of olive oil one requires only one-third of any edible oil for cooking . In addition owing to the high smelting point it can be re-used around 3 time bringing the effective cost to around Rs 30 per litre.

Completion of the planned bottling plant in Maharashtra would further reduce the price by another 20 per cent.

Having set base already at New Delhi, Chennai, Banagalore and Mumbai , the COO is overwhelmed by the market response in the eastern region about which he was bit skeptical . " We would come up to be the market leaders within next 5 years " , said Rajagopalan.