The war between PepsiCo and Coca-Cola is confined to aerated softdrinks. But an associate of Coca-Cola in India is opening a new front against Pepsi by venturing into the snack foods business.
One of Coca-Cola India's largest franchisee bottlers and one among the few which did not sell out to the Atlanta-based major, the Ladhani Group, will soon launch snacks (bhujiyas, namkeens, etc) under the brand name, Tingle. In a year's time, the company wants to make it a national brand. Competitor Fritolay (Lehar), a PepsiCo company, better watch out.
At the moment, Coca-Cola has no role to play in the venture. But the Ladhanis say the new business may be hived off into "a joint venture with multinationals such as Coca-Cola, etc, a couple of years from now." The advertisement calling for recruitments uses the Coca-Cola logo and talks of Ladhanis' association with the brand as its bottler.
Swastik Snacks Ltd, the new company, will initially launch 15 varieties of namkeens and bhujias in north India including the whole of Uttar Pradesh in May.
The Ladhanis are setting up a greenfield unit in Agra which will become operational by May. "The investment required will not be much considering that we have a strong network of 600 distributors in place within Uttar Pradesh -- thanks to our bottling and ice-creams business," Swastik Snacks Ltd managing director GC Ladhani told Business Standard.
"This is only a beginning. In the long-run, we can hive off the company into a separate subsidiary in association with big companies such as Coca-Cola -- it is just an example -- who do not have a similar business in India at present but may be interested in the next two-three years," the company's marketing head, Paritosh Ladhani, said.
He said that Tingle will compete with all the other prevalent brands including Ruffles and Lays. The Ladhanis have hired agencies in Delhi to promote the brand, he said.
Besides the bottling operations, the Ladhani group had diversified into ice-cream business last year under the 'Dairy Fun' brandname. The ice-cream brand was launched in western Uttar Pradesh and Ladhani claims that it has already achieved a marketshare of around 30 per cent. He said that the business is growing at a rate of about 150 per cent every year.
