The India Brand Equity Fund (IBEF) trust has decided to identify specific product groups and markets for focused attention for its financing and promotional efforts.
The products groups selected should be of long-term comparative advantage to India.
Apart from the markets which presently account for a large share of Indias exports, the trust on the basis of identification of emerging markets with potential for Indian products should finalise its promotional programme.
This exercise will be completed within the next few weeks and the activities of the fund will be launched within three months, an official press release said yesterday. The meeting was held on May 21 under the chairmanship of P P Prabhu, commerce secretary.
Among those present were leading industry figures like S K Dutta, chairman, Indal, Subodh Bhargava, managing director, Eicher Goodearth, Krishna Kumar, managing director, Tata Tea, Ramesh Gelli, chairman, Global Trust Bank, Shailendra Narayan, managing director, Sidbi, and Pradip N Khandwalla of IIM, Ahmedabad.
It was agreed that the trust should position itself as a professionally managed and autonomous institution fully dedicated to promotion of India and Indian brands in international markets. It was decided to take early steps to appoint a chief executive who could successfully operationalise these objectives.
The present corpus of the fund is around Rs 70 crore including Rs 50 crore contributed by the government. In view of the limited availability of funds with the trust, it was felt that the trust should encourage Indian companies to adopt a consortium approach for promoting their products in overseas markets in a cost effective manner. In this connection, a presentation was made before the trust by project India blends which has been promoted by some of the top Indian tea companies.
for promoting a common brand Nargis in the markets of CIS countries.
Nargis tea was launched in Russia last year and has already notched up sales of one million kgs.
The company hopes to intensify its market efforts in the CIS region and to replicate its strategy in other countries also.
The trust decided to provide funding support to the Nargis brand for additional promotional efforts. The details will be worked out by a sub-committee of trust.
A presentation was also made by ITPO regarding special fairs proposed to be organised to promote Indian brands in overseas markets. The trust felt that such special fairs involving reputed Indian companies with brand image could be a useful instrument of promoting the objectives of the trust.
