)
Ready-to-eat food which has put a lot of companies in a pickle has another entrant in the US-based healthcare and wellness company, MonaVie. Headquartered out of Chennai, MonaVie India has launched extensions of its heat-to-eat cereals brand, MonaVie ONE customised for the Indian palate last month.
MonaVie started its US operations in 2005 and India operations in 2011. It is present in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati and Chennai with its wellness products. Even though ready-to-heat cereals did not have players earlier, it still belongs to the Rs 100-crore ready-to-eat market which has seen giants like ITC struggle.
For India, MonaVie has introduced ragi meal, broken wheat meal and basmati khichdi. The company has been offering a heat-&-eat non-milk-base oat meal under the same brand for a year now.
Food has puzzled FMCG companies, given the varied preferences and food habits of the audience. HUL, the largest FMCG company, has its Achilles heels in foods and ITC's thrust on its ready-to-eat Kitchens of India has petered out. The branded, packaged foods market has seen ready-to-eat brands in traditional meal items such as packaged paneer butter masala or rajma masala from MTR, ITC, Heinz, Kohinoor Foods, Gits and so on. In cereals and other ready-to-heat meals, MonaVie will have the early-bird advantage for a pan-India player. Angshuman Bhattacharya, director (transaction services), KPMG India says the ready-to-eat market has grown at 16 per cent over the last five years to reach its current size.
Heat-to-eat food requires the packaged item to be heated in boiling water or in a pan or in a microwave, before consuming. The technology used for such packaging is the same as that used by defence forces to package food during war (retort packaging).
Players like Saffola, Horlicks, Kellogg's and Quaker offer ready-to-cook masala oats, but in smaller packs, priced between Rs 10-15 for 26-40-gm packs. The preparation time is comparable to their heat-to-eat counterparts of three-five minutes.
Krishnan says the products are based on the insight that demand for heat-to-eat, nutritionally balanced 'heavy' meal with Indian taste is very high and hence, have a large pack. Ankur Bisen, vice president and head (retail and consumer products) of Technopak Advisors agrees that the minute a product is labelled as a breakfast item, the scope of volume sales reduces to one-third, and hence, it makes sense to not term the ONE products as breakfast cereals but as meals. Ready-to-heat brands could answer the consumer's need for on-the-go food.
Analysts are also divided on whether ready-to-heat meals are at a disadvantage to ready-to-cook ones. Gaurav Gupta, senior director at Deloitte India says Indian women still prefer some amount of cooking to retain the sense of freshly-cooked meals.
Krishnan will bank on the direct distribution system to create a brand loyalty.
He says that in supermarkets people may choose between brands based on either price or flavour. "We get feedback directly from consumers and we don't need to maintain a huge inventory, we produce as per the demand," he explains.
MonaVie India has 100,000 distributors across India, of which 35,000-40,000 actively promote all its brands spanning health mixes, nutrition shakes, heat-to-eat cereals. The company estimates that 5,000 people regularly consume its products. MonaVie India promotes its ONE oatmeal to at least 100,000 people every week. "We roughly sold 40,000 packets in the past year," says Krishnan. It shied away from masala oats given that it is equated with food for the unwell. Indian direct selling companies have a market capitalisation of Rs 100-200 crore, say experts.
