Day dreams and high hopes

MARKETING: As banners fly high in the two-horse beer market race, is SABMiller closing in on UB's lead?

Head to head, you'd imagine there's no comparison. Vijay Mallya's UB group, of Kingfisher fame, is cheerfully ahead. Last year it sold an estimated 53 million cases, about half the Indian market for lager.

But SABMiller, a multinational that grew aggressive after acquiring Shaw Wallace's beer business, is ready to go the whole hog armed with quite a few market tricks (regular advertising is a no-no) for its frothy favourites Royal Challenge, Castle Lager and Haywards.

SABMiller, which entered India in 2000 panting for brewery capacity, first set up a local unit called Mysore Breweries, struck a joint venture with Shaw Wallace & Company in 2003, and then bought out the entire business last year.

To its mind, then, the race has barely begun. Just look at the numbers, it says. With a per capita beer consumption of only 0.7 litres, the Indian market is way too flat by western market comparison.

While Kingfisher flies the skies with its brand banner (as an airline), SABMiller has mounted a stiff challenge "" it claims to have cornered a third of the market. And hopes for more. Some days ago, acclaimed DJs from overseas were playing at hip nightclubs across the metros, raising mugs in honour of Castle Lager as part of the brand's Castle Loud music initiative that's busy throwing parties at pulsating pubs in Bangalore, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Delhi's NCR region.

SABMiller's strength, literally, is strong beer, thanks to its Haywards and Knockout franchises. "Strong beer comprises a major chunk "" 65 per cent "" of the total beer market, and SABMiller has anywhere between 42 and 44 per cent share in this segment," says Vinod Giri, director, marketing, SABMiller India. Royal Challenge and Castle are its upmarket brands, but it may get snazzier foreign labels in too.

Does this worry UB? No, it claims. Even in strong beer, UB claims to be stealing ahead. "Traditionally, the Shaw Wallace beer portfolio, particularly through Haywards 5000, used to be the largest selling portfolio in the strong beer category," says Shekhar Ramamurthy, executive vice-president, sales & marketing, UB, claiming that UB's strong beer business is growing faster than that of SABMiller's.

"In fact," he says, "in 2005-06, UB's strong beer portfolio has actually been marginally ahead of SABMiller's. More significantly, our leading strong beer brand, Kingfisher Strong, emerged as the single largest strong beer brand."

According to Ramamurthy, UB has every segment well chalked out. It has got the pub circuit hooked up for its draught beer, he says, and has taken the lead on diet beer as well. Regionally too, it has it neatly worked out.

While UB's biggest bucks go into Kingfisher, a 20-million-cases brand, UB Export works up a froth in Karnataka, Kalyani Black Label in Bengal and Tamil Nadu, and Sandpiper in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Delhi.

It's not an easy business to understand the dynamics of: each brand aims at a special psychographic profile of beer guzzler. And at the end, there's Flying Horse too "" a dream brand better taken lightly than literally. Meanwhile, there's another Kingfisher taking wing at the airport...