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He is there at the behest of the $35-billion global snacking powerhouse, Mondelez International, which was demerged from Kraft Foods last year, and now controls Cadbury among other snack and confectionary brands. Mondelez has kicked off an on-ground initiative in India that will reinforce the experience of having a Tang, the billion-dollar, powdered beverage brand in the company's portfolio.
For Tang, which entered Rasna's territory, India is a key market. While Tang was present in the grey market, it started getting officially distributed only in 2005-06 through third-party distributors. But Mondelez took over the distribution of the brand over the last two years.
Last year, Mondelez introduced a thick, pulpy mango version of the popular drink - a first for the brand in any country. This year, young men have been positioned at various hypermarkets such as Big Bazaar, HyperCity, Walmart, Spencer's, Tesco and Reliance carrying portable tanks filled with liquid Tang. They can be found in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. For a drink, consumers have to simply approach these men, who promptly whip out a glass and pour a drink.
"The idea of this exercise was to give consumers a quick taste of the drink rather than depend on them to prepare it after getting hold of a pack," says Narayan Sundararaman, category director - beverages, candy & gum and director - consumer insights & strategy, Mondelez International. "This is the first time we have undertaken a wet sampling exercise for Tang in the country," he says. Mondelez will target no less than 500,000 people with its wet sampling exercise this summer.
Mondelez has not stopped with its Rocketmen alone. It is putting up Tang Refreshment Bars, again at various malls and hypermarkets. These product racks double as dispensers during certain parts of the day. "During 'happy hours', a regular Tang product shelf in modern trade transforms into a beverage-vending machine for some time. We are doing this at select locations for sampling the product on the spot," Sundararaman says.
Players such as Rasna and Tang have come up with fruity products in the last few years to differentiate from other ready-to-prepare beverage formats. Piruz Khambatta, chairman & managing director, Rasna, says, "This year, we have launched origin-driven variants of Rasna Fruit Fun (a sub-brand of Rasna) such as Nagpur Orange, Alphonso Mango and Shikanji Nimbupani. As a powdered beverage player, innovating with flavours becomes critical for us. This year, there was a need for flavours that originate from a specific region."
Both Rasna and Tang have already pushed the envelope when it comes to nutrient and fruit fortification. This year, Mondelez has been heavily advertising its "fruit equity" in Tang - about how real fruit powder has been added to the core product, says Sundararaman. Khambatta of Rasna claims fruit fortification is something his company undertook almost five to six years ago.
Activations, Mondelez hopes, will not only help Tang's taste case and provide instant gratification, but also pique interest among those who haven't tried the drink, or, are sitting on the fence on whether to buy a powdered beverage or not.
The reason for this is not difficult to gauge, say market experts. Powdered beverages such as Tang and Rasna compete with a plethora of prepared beverages (ready-to-prepare) such as squashes, sherbets and glucose powder in India. The organised market for prepared drinks constitutes Rs 1,000 crore, growing at about 15-20 per cent per year, according to market experts. Of this, powdered beverages constitute about 45 per cent, growing at a clip of about 20 per cent annually.
However, a fruity turn for these beverage brands would also mean that they have to jostle for mindspace with packaged juices and drinks such as colas which have a strong health and fruit punch in their positioning. Juice-based drinks and 100-per-cent-juices that experts hail as the category of the future, comprise a Rs 6,000-crore market, growing at 16 per cent per year, according to industry estimates. That means a clientele which is larger than powdered drinks, not to mention the Rs 10,000-crore-a-year carbonated drinks market.
Among the powdered drink players, Tang has some distance to cover to match up to the incumbent, Rasna, the all-India leader. Compare Rasna's distribution reach: It has 18 lakh outlets to Tang's 4.5 lakh outlets, and price points that go from Rs 1 to Rs 85. However, with Tang's many modern trade activations, it has managed to make a dent in this channel with a value share of 29.2 per cent to Rasna's nine per cent, according to Nielsen data sourced from the industry, in January-March, 2013.
Tang is also expected to beef up its portfolio with the launch of new flavours, though there are no immediate plans to increase its stock-keeping units. It is currently available in sachets of Rs 5, 200 gram packs of Rs 48 and 500-gram packs of Rs 98. Rasna, of course, remains the price warrior with Rs 1, Rs 2, Rs 5, Rs 10 and Rs 20 being the core price points for its packed powdered drinks.
