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July 24, 2022
By Aishwarya Ramesh
Tata Consumer Products has rolled out ready-to-cook mock meat products under the brand name Simply Better.
Tata Consumer Products (TCPL) is the latest company to enter the plant-based meat segment in India. TCPL has launched a brand called Simply Better – which includes range of ready-to-cook (RTC) products, made of plant-based meat.
The RTC range is a mix of snacking dishes and traditional Indian dishes. It includes plant-based chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, chicken burger patties and Awadhi seekh kebabs. All these plant-based products are currently available on Amazon Prime and Flipkart.
TCPL’s Simply Better products as seen on Amazon.
When it comes to multinational companies, ITC has a play in this (RTC) category. Its Master Chef range includes a plant-based burger patty, priced at Rs 630 for 300 grams. The range has both vegetarian and non-vegetarian frozen snacks and kebabs. The Incredible range also has plant-based chicken nuggets, priced at Rs 475 for 300 grams.
ITC’s IncrEdible plant-based RTC range
Compared to ITC’s offering, Tata’s Simply Better line is priced slightly differently. 270 grams of plant-based chicken nuggets costs Rs 390 and the plant-based burger patty is priced at Rs 450 for 300 grams.
According to a report by Research and Markets, the Indian meat substitutes and mock meat market is estimated to reach over USD47.57 million in value terms by the end of FY2026 and is forecast to grow at CAGR of 7.48% during FY2021E-FY2026.
Devangshu Dutta, chief executive and founder at Third Eyesight, a specialist consulting firm, mentions that the presence of Tata Consumer Products and ITC could help in increasing adoption of the category over time, since both are large players intending to scale with mainstream customers.
“However, both companies will be advertising and targeting the same cohort of customers. Additionally, the two will also be competing against the multiple D2C brands in the category,” he added.
The plant-based meat market, or smart protein market, includes D2C brands. Some of these brands are also backed and endorsed by celebrities and athletes. The Good Dot is endorsed by Olympic athlete Neeraj Chopra, cricketer Virat Kohli and his wife and actress Anushka Sharma have invested in Blue Tribe and actor-couple Riteish Deshmukh and his wife Genelia Deshmukh have invested in plant-based meat startup Imagine Meats.
Anchit Chauhan, AVP – planning, Wunderman Thompson, mentions that the plant-based industry has been built by a set of startups, and now Tata has decided to enter the segment – somewhat late.
“If you look at the e-commerce segment too, Tata entered late with Tata CLiQ, almost 10-12 years after the e-commerce category had been built by the likes of Amazon and Flipkart. But the advantage Tata has is that the trust factor will always be associated with it. It will be able to leverage that brand equity and create success out of it.”
Dutta points out that for years, the most popular plant-based meat product had been Ruchi Soya’s product – Nutrela’s soya chunks and granules (soya chunks available at Rs 499 for 200 grams and granules at Rs 250 for a kilogram). Soya chunks have been available in India since the 1980s and Dutta calls it the ‘poor man’s meat replacement’.
He says that Indians already get protein in their diet through lentils, pulses and beans, and even those who consume non-vegetarian food don’t do so on a regular basis.
“They may eat it once or twice a week. Some people who convert from non-vegetarian to vegetarian, don’t miss the taste at all. Protein isn’t a huge selling point for these products either. So, this specific faux meat segment in India is a niche market.”
Both analysts (Dutta and Chauhan) opined that Tata’s entry into the segment would not have significant impact on the way the products are priced in this category.
According to Chauhan, India is mostly a vegetarian country and the consumers who may opt for plant-based products are ones who may do so out of concern for the environment, love for animals or an overall healthier diet.
Reasons for turning to plant-based meat
“Plant-based products are essentially for non-vegetarians, who have a certain taste but are willing to give it up because they feel for the environment or animals. But that’s a very urban niche right now. If you’re a ‘woke’ urban consumer, the price point of the products may not matter,” says Chauhan.
“One of the factors for this segment to grow in India is availability. Whether it is a startup or a company as big as Tata or ITC, it has to have financial muscle to sustain growth and must be easily available to consumers. Visibility and user trials are important, especially to attract consumers who wish to make a lifestyle switch in their diet. That’s why modern retail is an important channel for these products,” Dutta adds.
Different brands in the segment right now
Dutta explains fundamental consumer behaviour and calls expansion in this market ‘tricky’, since it is difficult to get people to change their behaviour.
“This is even more the case in smaller cities and towns, where people may have a more traditional mindset. Take the example of Kelloggs – it has been in the country for almost 30 years and there hasn’t been a mass behaviour switch as far as breakfast meals are concerned.”
Chauhan adds that it is not just plant-based meat, there is now demand for alcohol-free products – which taste the same as alcohol but do not have any of the side effects that come with drinking alcohol.
Dutta mentions that people in Tier-II and III cities may not be aware of plant-based meats. This is a tricky category that requires a lot more development. “It’s possible that plant-based meats will remain an urban phenomenon for a long time.”
Source : afaqs.com
admin
June 28, 2022
June 28, 2022
Edited by Surabhi Shaurya, India.com
The blanket ban on single-use plastic items from next month poses a challenge to cool beverages such as Frooti, Real, Tropicana and Maaza. Earlier, beverage company Parle Agro, which owns Frooti and Appy had also urged the government to extend the deadline to implement the ban on plastic straws by six months. For the unversed, the government’s ban on single-use plastics, including plastic straw, is going to be effective from July 1, 2022.
Calling the government’s decision a ‘hasty ban’, Parle Agro had said it will ‘negatively impact’ overall businesses of the industry players in the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) and beverage segment. “While Parle Agro endorses the government-led ban on the use of plastic straws, our plea is to postpone the implementation of the injunction by six months,” the company had said in a statement.
Amul Urges Environment Ministry to Postpone Ban
Besides, leading dairy firm Amul has urged the environment ministry to postpone the ban imposed on plastic straw by one year due to lack of adequate availability of paper straws in the domestic as well as international markets. “We have written a letter to Environment Secretary on the proposed ban on single use plastic straw,” Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) MD R S Sodhi had said last month.
GCMMF markets its milk and other dairy products under Amul brand. “The plastic straw in our butter milk and lassi is attached to tetra pack. It is part of primary packaging. So we have urged the Environment Ministry to include it as part of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and recycling,” Sodhi said.
Amul needs 10-12 lakh plastic straws daily. Besides, Sodhi said, the company has urged the ministry to provide local industry one year to set up dedicated facilities for producing paper straws. “Paper straws are not available in domestic market. We don’t have capacity. We are not getting paper straws in international market,” he added.
Why Are Beverage Makers Worried?
To ensure a smooth transition to environment-friendly options like the paper of PLA straws, non-alcoholic beverage makers would require at least 6-8 months.
Parle Agro said that India produces and sells around 6 billion packs of paper-based beverage cartons with integrated plastic straws per annum. The available capacity to provide alternatives like biodegradable PLA straws or paper straws by a local Indian manufacturer is 1.3 million units per day, which is much less than the actual requirement.
“Packaging companies will need to invest in the right infrastructure to accommodate the changes which will require time to ensure the alternative is appropriate and cost-effective, especially during inflationary times,” the company said in a statement, adding that currently, there is no local manufacturer who can accommodate the demand.”
How Will Ban Impact The Sale Of Cold Beverages
The supply chain of beverages sold in small tetra packs will be disrupted with the blanket ban. Moreover, the beverage makers might have to incur heavy import and logistics costs as they import paper straws to replace plastic straws.
Speaking to Moneycontrol, Devangshu Dutta, CEO of retail consulting firm Third Eyesight said, “The companies have to look at alternative solutions, which may increase the costs. It will be challenging for the companies to pass on the increase in cost to the consumer as it may dampen demand, especially given the fact that these products are priced at low price points to target a certain consumer cohort.”
Full list of items to be banned from July 1:
admin
November 28, 2021
By Rasul Bailay & Writankar Mukherjee, Economic Times
November 27, 2021
Reliance Retail aims to be one of the world’s top retailers, but for the last couple of years, it has been a buyer, not a seller. It has bought a string of retail brands — from online pharmacy Netmeds and online furniture retailer Urban Ladder to digital lingerie seller Zivame, online grocer MilkBasket and haute couture label Ritu Kumar. The latest acquisition was Sri Lankan lingerie brand Amante.
These acquisitions are crucial cogs in Reliance Retail’s further push into brick-and-mortar and ecommerce, and are part of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) unit’s larger strategy: To break into the global top ten retailers. India’s largest retailer (by sales as well as by the number of stores) is currently ranked 53rd in the world, according to Deloitte’s Global Powers of Retailing 2021. Reliance Retail reported an annual revenue of $22 billion and a net profit of $750 million for the fiscal year ending March 2021.
At the same time, the company is looking beyond pure retailing. It’s pursuing a larger play to tap into the growing pie of the country’s overall consumption story — from contract manufacturing to distribution of everything from affordable fashion and consumer electronics to grocery products in India’s $850 billion annual retail market that is expected to swell to $1.3 trillion in the next few years. (Reliance did not respond to ET’s questionnaire.)
Analysts say Reliance’s overall plan is to engage India’s burgeoning consumers in its ecosystem one way or the other at any given point of time: shopping in its vast network of physical stores or on JioMart ecommerce platform, using Jio’s mobile or WiFi networks, watching movies on Jio Cinema, paying through Jio wallet so on and so forth that it is dubbed by the petroleum-to-telecommunications conglomerate as “retail plus” strategy.
“Their plan is to weave their products and services so deeply into your life that from morning to evening you are spending time and money on their networks either directly or indirectly,” says a top executive of an online grocery retailer. “Their idea is to constantly keep consumers engaged in a Jio bubble or in a Jio world.” The executive estimates India has a middle class of around 40 crore people. “Even if they succeed in capturing 10% of that wallet share, it is going to be huge,” he says.
That’s the reason Reliance Retail is betting big on business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce, with a digital wholesale marketplace along the lines of Alibaba for products such as smartphones, televisions, garments and grocery items, among other products, according to people aware of the plan. It’s looking to service a whole gamut of retailers in cities and villages.
Reliance has already started distributing its licencee products of Kelvinator- and BPL-branded consumer electronic items and its smartphone JioPhone Next, produced in collaboration with Google, to retailers outside of Reliance’s stable. The company also boasts a whole host of private brands and many of them are making inroads into general trade.
“The market for modern retail and ecommerce put together would be 15-20% in India. The rest 80% is still in the traditional market. If Reliance can make an entry into the traditional market and partner the smaller stores, the opportunity for growth and revenue is much more,” says an industry executive aware of the plans.
“Reliance’s approach is not to be a threat to small stores or merchants, but to be their enabler, provide them merchandise at best wholesale rates, upgrade their stores and even list them on their ecommerce platforms to help them reach newer consumers,” he adds.
Reliance is doing exactly that. Earlier this year, it started supplying Puric InstaSafe-branded FMCG products like soaps, home disinfectants and sanitisers to kiranas in Punjab and West Bengal. It is planning to roll these items nationwide. The company has put in place a marketing team for the first time to push these products. Similarly, B2B portal Ajio Business is selling T-shirts for Rs 79 onwards, a pair of jeans for Rs 220 and shirts for Rs 170 onwards to small businesses. Last quarter, Reliance Retail forayed into the wholesale business of medicines through Netmeds by roping in neighbourhood pharmacies under its B2B initiative.
These are some of the steps in the conglomerate’s bet not just on pure retail play but on end-to-end gameplay in the retail ecosystem, controlling manufacturing, wholesale, supply chain, ecommerce and payments.
To augment its digital wholesale plans, Reliance Retail has already converted its network of cash-and-carry outlets into fulfilment centres.
Analysts say Reliance’s ambitions are long-term and capital intensive and the company is ready for the long haul and to spend. “Reliance’s plan to rope in and aggregate many elements together — retailers, B2B buyers, suppliers, small players — and bring them on board takes time and is a capital-hungry business,” says Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of consulting firm Third Eyesight. “But controlling end-to-end is Reliance’s game plan in any business, including telecom, where it spans the entire value chain of not just providing the mobile network but also a digital interface with consumers.”
In a bid to feed its ambitious consumption plans, Reliance Retail is lapping up stores and warehouses nationwide to service both ecommerce and B2B sales through its “new commerce” omnichannel plans that will also involve legions of kiranas as last-mile delivery agents as well as buyers of Reliance’s products. Reliance Retail, which operates more than 13,000 stores of various formats, plans to open around 5,000 outlets of its Smart Point that would entail a convenience store, a pharmacy, agnostic centre, a telecom services and financial services products outlet all rolled into one across the country.
Reliance is planning to take this format to even tehsils, according to sources. Real estate agents and mall executives say Reliance is scouting for space for supermarkets, fashion outlets and jewellery and footwear stores.
They say Reliance is also planning to enter newer retail formats like a department store chain to compete with Shoppers Stop and Lifestyle. Also in the works is a Sephora-style beauty and cosmetics chain, they say.
“We will focus on expanding our store footprint multifold this year with co-located delivery hubs over the next few years. They will provide a strong network to reach and serve millions of merchants and customers,” Ambani said at the last AGM of shareholders.
Deloitte’s Global Powers of Retailing 2021 report ranked Reliance Retail as the world’s second fastest growing retailer, behind South Korea’s Coupang Corp.
Global financial and tech titans have taken notice of Reliance Retail’s play and pumped billions of dollars into it. Last year, the holding company Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd raised Rs 47,265 crore by selling about 10% stake to some of the biggest names in global private equity, including Silver Lake, KKR, General Atlantic, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and TPG.
Reliance will continue with its acquisition spree, say analysts. However, Reliance Retail’s largest, the Rs 25,000 crore acquisition of Future Group, is bogged down by Amazon’s opposition to the proposed deal.
(Published in Economic Times)
admin
June 6, 2015
Bureau,
Financial Express
Mumbai,
6 Jun 2015
In
a belated attempt to salvage its reputation, Swiss FMCG major
Nestle on Friday decided to recall its Maggi instant noodles from
the market to end the ensuing confusion in the minds of consumers,
which it said did not provide a conducive environment for the
product to be in the market at this point of time.
The company’s group CEO Paul Bulcke flew down to India and addressed a crowded press conference to reiterate that its products are safe to consume and that it applies the same quality standards and the same food safety and quality assurance system everywhere in the world. “We felt unfounded reasons resulted in confusion and the trust of consumers was shaken,” Bulcke said.
Though sales of Maggi in India account for roughly 0.005% of Nestle’s global revenue of almost 92 billion Swiss francs ($98.6 billion), Bulcke acknowledged that the recent developments had damaged its brand and the company was in for a long haul. “If you have confusion there is something wrong with communications. That’s why we are sitting here,” he said.
However, the company’s troubles do not seem to end. Even as Bulcke’s press conference was on, the food safety regulator, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), ordered the company to recall all nine approved variants of the instant noodles from the market, terming them “unsafe and hazardous” for human consumption. It ordered it to stop further production, processing, import, distribution and sale of the product with immediate effect. It even said that Nestle launched the Maggi Oats Masala Noodles without approval and, therefore, ordered its recall as the company did not undertake a risk and safety assessment for the product. The regulator also said that Nestle violated labelling regulations on taste enhancer MSG and ordered the company to submit compliance report on its orders within three days.
After reports of presence of mono-sodium glutamate and lead in excess content in some samples surfaced in Uttar Pradesh around two weeks ago, till Thursday five states — Delhi, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand — had banned its sale pending tests in government laboratories. Major retails chains as well as small eateries had also withdrawn the products from their stores and menu. However, with the FSSAI’s order on Friday the company’s woes are expected to increase and the crisis may get prolonged.
Referring to the reports of high lead content in tests by certain government laboratories, the Nestle global CEO said that the company needed to find out the methodology adopted by the government’s test centres. Denying that the company added MSG in Maggi, Bulcke said that MSG was found in the product because of natural ingredients like groundnut oil, onion powder and wheat flour which contain glutamate naturally. However, to remove any confusion the company has decided to remove from now on the “Contains no MSG” labelling.
While analysts welcomed the recall of Maggi by Nestle, they questioned the delay in doing so and even clashing with the regulator and denying the problem for weeks. “If you ask me, everything that Nestle has done is wrong. In this day and age of social media, you cannot question the government and consumers,” said Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail consultancy Technopak.
“Nestle India should have given higher priority to the interest of the consumer and should have done a nationwide recall right at the beginning instead of confronting the situation. In this case they have managed to lose trust of their consumers. Nestle India needs to understand that a brand lives on the trust of the consumer,” Devangshu Dutta, chief executive at Third Eyesight said.
(With inputs from Sharleen D’Souza in Mumbai.)
(Published in Financial Express.)
Devangshu Dutta
January 5, 2010
If we were to look at phrases that have cropped up during the recent recessionary times in the consumer goods sector, “private label” has to be among those at the top of the list.
From clothing to cereals, toothpaste to televisions, there is hardly a category that has not seen retailers trying their hand at creating own labelled products.
The first motivation for most retailers to move into private label is margin. On first analysis, it appears that the branded suppliers are making tons of extra money by being out there in front of the consumer with a specific named product. The retailer finds that creating an alternative product under its own label allows it to capture extra gross margin. Typically the product category picked at the earliest stage of private label development would be one for which several generic or commodity suppliers are available.
At this early stage, the retailer is aiming for a relatively predictable, stable-demand and easily available product whose sales would be driven by the footfall that is already attracted into the store. A powerful bait to attract the customer is the visible reduction in price, as compared to a similar branded product. If the product can be compared like-for-like, customers would certainly convert to private label over time.
However, maintaining prices lower than brands can also be counter-productive. In many products, while customers might not be able to discern any qualitative difference, they may suspect that they are not getting a product comparable to one from a national or international brand. And while private label can drive off-take, the price differential can also erode gross margin which was the reason that the retailer may have got into private label in the first place. Over time, such a strategy can prove difficult to sustain, as costs of developing, sourcing and managing private label products move up.
The other strong reason a retailer chooses to have private label is to create a product offering that is differentiated from competitors who also offer brands that are similar or identical to the ones offered by the retailer. Department stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets around the world have all tried this approach – some have been more successful than others. The idea is to provide a customer strong reasons to visit their particular store, rather than any of the comparable competitors.
Of course, when differentiation is the operating factor, the products need more insight and development, and closer handling by the retailer at all stages. A price-driven private label line may be sourced from generic suppliers, but that approach isn’t good enough for a line driven by a differentiation strategy. In this case, costs of product development and management increase for the retailer. However, to compensate, the discount from a comparable national brand is not as high as generic nascent private label. In fact, some retailers have taken their private label to compete head on with national brands – they treat their private labels as respectfully as a national branded supplier would treat its brand.
So what does it take to go from a “copycat” to being a real brand?
Third Eyesight has evolved a Private Label Maturity Model (see the accompanying graphic) that can help retailers think through their approach to private label, whether their product offering is dominated by private label, or whether they have only just begun considering the possibility of including private label in their product range. The model sketches out a maturity path on five parameters that are affected by or influence the strength of a retailer’s private label offering:
In some cases, retailers may have multiple labels, some of which may be quite nascent while others might be highly evolved, clear and comparable to a national brand. This could be by default, because the labels have been launched at different times and have had more or less time to evolve. However, this can also be used as a conscious strategy to target various segments and competitive brands differently, depending on the strength of the competition and their relationship with the consumer.
The interesting thing is that size and scale do not offer any specific advantage to becoming a more sophisticated private label player. Some extremely large retailers continue to follow a discounted-price “me-too” private label strategy where even the packaging and colours of the product are copied from national brands, while much smaller players demonstrate capabilities to understand their specific consumers’ needs to design, source and promote proprietary products that compare with the best brands in the market.
For a moment, let’s also look at private labels from the suppliers’ point of view. As far as we can see, private label seems to be here to stay and grow. Suppliers can treat private labels as a threat, and figure out how to ensure that they retain a certain visibility and relationship with the consumer. On the other hand, interestingly, some suppliers are also looking at private label as an opportunity. They see the growth of private label as inevitable, and would much rather collaborate in the retailer’s private label development efforts. This way they can maintain some kind of influence on the product development, possibly avoid direct head-on conflict with their own star branded products and, if everything else fails, at least grab a share of the market that would have otherwise gone over to generic suppliers.
If you are retailer, I would suggest using the Private Label Maturity Model to clarify where you want to position yourself, and continue to use it as a guide as you develop and deliver your private label offering.
If you are a supplier concerned about private label, my suggestion would be to gauge how developed your customer is and is likely to become, and ensure that you are at least in step, if not a step ahead.
Of course, if you need support, we’ll only be too happy to help! (Contact Third Eyesight to discuss your private label needs.)
