Adani's Fortune is in Triton's hands

Adani Wilmar Limited (AWL), one of India's largest processors and traders of edible oils, has entered the retail market with the launch of its Fortune range of refined oil.

The range includes sunflower, soyabean, cottonseed and rapeseed oil. The sunflower oil will be marketed in northern parts of India whereas the cottonseed and soyabean oil will be sold in Gujarat and Rajasthan, parts of U.P, Haryana, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, and Maharashtra. The oils are available in pack sizes ranging from 500 ml to 15 lt in tamper proof pouches, PET bottles, HDPE jerry cans and tins.

The company has planned out a mammoth advertising campaign for the brand. It will be advertised mainly through print and television. The commercial has been made by Triton Advertising and is targeted at the health conscious urban consumers. The commercial, which will break out on the small screen soon, tries to associate the brand with guilt-free eating, through the refrain ‘Thoda aur chaley ga!'.

"The brand has been positioned as a ‘better oil' - better than what is available," says Rajesh Adani, managing director, AWL. So what makes Fortune the ‘better oil'? Explains Adani, "The Fortune brand has the least percentage of wax compared with other edible oils. The patented technology from Desmot of Belgium is used to de-wax and winterize the oil to completely eliminate fats and waxes."

The same is communicated to consumers in towns and districts of Rajasthan and Gujarat through direct marketing. The company routinely sends vans to villages and towns to demonstrate how the Fortune oil is better than the competitors. They carry samples of oil and run tests to explain that Fortune is lighter and healthier. "Moreover, the Fortune brand is priced competitively when compared with local brands like Maruti or Tirupati," says Adani.

Prior to the launch, the company did a test launch in parts of Rajasthan and Gujarat sometime in November. The test launch indicated that tastes and preferences vary across regions. Sunflower oil was more popular with the northern Indian consumers while cottonseed and soyabean were preferred in Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Going by the market research findings, AWL is currently looking at the sunflower oil as the key segment to establish the Fortune brand. The sunflower oil category constitutes 12 per cent of the edible oil market, estimated at 12 lakh tonne. And there are only a handful of national players in this segment like Sundrop, Sweekar, Dhara Health, Gemini - predominantly catering to the urban consumers. "The competition will be a little tougher in the sunflower oil segment," says Hemant K. Tata, senior vice-president, manufacturing and marketing.

Pricing its sunflower oil ‘Fortune' at Rs 38-39 per litre, the company hopes to take on the already famous brand ‘Sundrop' with its network of 375 distributors. The company plans to service an expansive retail network of about 1,25,000 outlets spread across northern, central and western parts of the country.

Besides the Fortune brand of refined edible oils, AWL also markets refined palmolein oil under the brand name Jubilee. Another vanaspati brand ‘Raag' will be launched in India in the last week of February.

When asked why the company decided to step into the edible oil retail market, Tata answered, "because of the low per capita consumption of edible oil in our country in comparison to developed countries. Which means there is a huge potential in the Indian market. This encouraged AWL's entry into the retailing of branded oil products."

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