Bisleri to foray into spate of beverages
Bisleri International chief Ramesh Chauhan’s ambitious plans to foray into a spate of beverages, including health drinks, sugar-free juices and juice drinks and fortified and flavoured waters, are nearing completion.
By Ratna Bhushan, ET Bureau |
NEW DELHI: Bisleri International chief Ramesh Chauhan���s ambitious plans to foray into a spate of beverages, including health drinks, sugar-free juices and juice drinks and fortified and flavoured waters, are nearing completion. This, even as his spat with Coca-Cola over the international rights of juice drink Maaza remains unresolved. Mr Chauhan���s plans of entering the beverages segment are in advanced stages and the take off is expected later in the year. These plans have been in the pipeline for close to three years now and he had originally planned to introduce fruit juices and juice-based drinks under the Alfa brand.
Mr Chauhan said, ���We are working on plans for other beverages; we���ve already got the designs of the bottles of some of the beverages in place.��� He added if things went according to plan, the roll-out would begin to happen this year itself.
Bisleri International���s bolstered portfolio of beverages would pit it not only against global beverage players Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in the juices and juice-drinks segment but also in competition with his brother Prakash Chauhan, whose Frooti and Appy are leading brands. Mr Chauhan said: ���Bisleri International has the expertise to enter any of these categories whenever we feel the time is right.���
The creator of mega brands like Thums Up, Limca, Maaza and Goldspot said the first-off-the-block would be enhanced waters. But sources close to Bisleri International told ET that Chauhan and his team have been actively lobbying with regulatory bodies to allow use of sugar-free ingredients in juice drinks.
Mr Chauhan���s plans to revisit beverages are backed by the success he has found in mass-packaged water. With a 60%-plus market share, Bisleri brand is way ahead of competitors Kinley and Aquafina. In fact, Bisleri is learnt to be growing at a healthy 35-40% annually, ahead of the 10-12% the Rs 1,200-1,500-crore packaged water industry is growing at.
While other players in packaged water have faltered because of various challenges���steep excise duty of 16%, wafer thin margins, requirement of a seamless supply chain, rampant price under-cutting by unorganised sector brands���Bisleri has only grown in market share.
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Sources say Mr Chauhan has specially gained from bulk water���a category that���s growing twice as fast as smaller packs and contributes as much as 50-60% to overall industry sales. Another source added: ���For all the concerns about Chauhan not having the management bandwidth, he has the expertise to create big brands.���Bisleri International has an existing strength of 54 bottling plants, of which nine are company-owned, the rest being a combination of franchisee bottlers and contract packers.
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