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Druk to change tack
Tashi Industries, Bhutan-based food company manufacturing the Druk brand of products like jams, juices and squash, plans to adopt a new course in India.
agencyfaqs! News Bureau
NEW DELHI, July 25
Tashi Industries, Bhutan-based food company manufacturing the Druk brand of products like jams, juices and squash, plans to adopt a new course in India. To begin with, the company hopes to discard its three-decade old image of a price warrior and take a more aggressive route to regain its lost market. It plans to fight competition through a more wide-spread distribution network and through better visibility, increasing media spends and promotions.
In India, Tashi Industries operates through its 51 per cent subsidiary Tai Industries, which will henceforth be responsible for marketing and distribution of the Druk range of products. At a press conference to launch its new pickle range in the market, Tai Industries, manager, business development, Deepankar Lahiri said that Druk products earlier had an 8 to 10 per cent price advantage over competitors.
This had ensured Druk a strong following in the Indian market over the last 30 years. In the last few years, however, the brand got a huge drubbing in the Indian market because of problems in distribution, which the company is trying to sort out now. As a step in this direction, Tai Industries has been made responsible for the distribution, which was earlier being carried out by agents appointed directly from Bhutan. Lahiri said that the new arrangement would help the brand gain greater penetration.
The company, would, however continue to price its products competitively for the institutional sales segment. "We are also trying to change the image of the company and make it more FMCG oriented," Lahiri said. In short, the company will try and move away from its overwhelming dependence on institutional sales. The company is also considering selling its products in tetrapaks soon to regain its market shares in the juice segment.
So far its new range of pickles are concerned, they would be available in flavours like mixed vegetable, mango, lime, garlic, sweet and sour, green chilli and red stuffed chilly and would have ‘a traditional Indian taste'. The company hopes to corner a 10 per cent share of the Rs 100 crore branded pickles market by the end of the first year itself.
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