Rice is the latest in a series of brand extensions.
Marico has been experimenting with healthy and functional foods under the Saffola brand name for some time now. In the last few years, the brand has been extended to low-sodium salt and atta mixes for diabetics besides the core cooking oil. Rice was the latest addition to that list.
Saffola Arise, a low Glycemic Index rice, was launched recently by Marico at an invitation price of Rs 49 for a four-and-a-half-kg pack and one-kg pack respectively. The rollout follows a period of intense prototyping by the company.
“GI diets,” says Saugata Gupta, chief executive officer, consumer products, Marico Ltd, “contains carbohydrates, which digests slowly, and helps release glucose over a longer period of time, keeping the body fuller thereby helping in weight management.” There are also additional health benefits the company is playing up with Arise such as the product being low on calories, points out Gupta.
Quite clearly the company is plugging the need for a product in the rice category that is rich in nutrients and low on calories. All of Saffola’s brand extensions have incidentally addressed a pressing health issue in their respective categories. This is how Marico has attempted to build a consumer base for its products under the Saffola umbrella.
The Saffola cooking oil, for instance, plugged the need for a product that was simply, ‘healthy for the heart’. Advertising over the years (since the early 1990s, to be precise) dwelt on what regular edible oils did to the vital organ - build cholesterol that is - eventually damaging the heart.
This clever appropriation of the space with communication that played on the agony of almost losing a loved one to a heart attack did the trick. Saffola today is synonymous with preventive heartcare in the country. As Harish Bijoor, chief executive officer, Harish Bijoor Consults, says, “Saffola means heart. That is the positioning in the minds of people. Ironically, allied marketers could have played up this virtue. They did not. Saffola did.”
Rivals have reacted to Saffola's attributes in a different way instead. Sundrop from Agrotech Foods, a unit of global major ConAgra Foods, which is the other key player in the super-premium-refined-edible-oil category besides Saffola, has a generalised tagline ‘healthy oil for healthy people’. Ashish Sharma, head, marketing, Agrotech Foods, says this gives the brand more room to play. “Addressing a specific health issue is fine. But our positioning allows for a larger play. That helps from a sales point of view. People are not picking up our product because they are worried about the state of their heart only. General health and wellbeing also count which our brand addresses.”
At the moment, there is a fierce battle for market share in the super-premium-refined-edible-oil category. A C Nielsen data for the month of December ’09 shows that Saffola had a lead over Sundrop in terms of volume share. It stood at 54 per cent for Saffola and 46 per cent for Sundrop respectively.
This increase in market share is despite the fact that Saffola is available at a higher price point to Sundrop. Saffola is priced at Rs 80-Rs 140 for various stock keeping units. Sundrop, on the other hand, comes at Rs 65, going up to Rs 120, says Sharma.
Incidentally, Saffola’s brand extensions into salt and atta mixes have been slightly muted in their performance as well as visibility. But by riding on the Saffola brand name, Marico hopes to push up offtake of these products over time. “The base of branded staples is small at the moment, Saffola can gain an edge there as the segment grows,” says Anand Ramanathan, manager, KPMG.
The possibility, in fact, of the Saffola brand name being extended into a few more categories in the future cannot be ruled out, say industry sources, as the company looks to innovate using the healthy platform. All that Marico’s Gupta says is that the health-benefit space allows us to try out different things.
