Gati piggybacks on Santa Claus to create brand equity

How about Santa Claus delivering gifts right at your doorstep? Hyderabad-based express distribution and supply chain solutions provider, Gati Limited, is making this possible through its special Christmas delivery service called ‘Gati Santa Goodies’.

Conceptualised in 2007, Gati’ites (as the company calls its staff) dress up like Santa to deliver cakes, chocolates, cookies and small decorated Xmas trees across Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and other major metros, says Harry Lagad, executive director of Gati. There are 10 warehousing locations for Gati in India for this service. The number of gati delivery representatives (or Santas) has increased to 80 for this Christmas, as compared with 40 in 2009.

Until 2007, the publicly-listed company was doing the gift-delivery service from an internal perspective, offering a catalogue of geographic indication (GI) products like Kesar and apples from Kashmir, Darjeeling tea, Kondapally toys and Kerala spices.

“We have been associated with 10,000 corporate customers. However, as part of our strategy, we decided last year to make Gati a consumer brand,” says Lagad.

The company, in November 2010, launched a gifting portal ‘makemygiftz.com’ to complement the Santa Goodies concept, wherein consumers can handpick a gift with a click of a button.

“We had invested in Genometri, a proprietory and patented technology (combination of software and hardware) for customisation of gifts including personalised handwriting and photographs, which we are using since long. However, this year, we are introducing a special printing technique, using edible ink for cakes, besides edible paper boxes to wrap the cakes and goodies. This apart, we plan to have the Santa Claus delivery with Xmas music accompanied with him, along with a bag of free goodies for the customers,” Lagad says.

Gati incurred revenues of Rs 12.14 lakh through this service in 2008, and Rs 15.16 lakh in 2009. “It (Santa Goodies) is all about branding and consumer-connect,” he adds.

On Gati’s regular business front, he says the company has created three sub-brands – Gati Express Distribution (core sub-brand), Redsun (supply chain solutions) and Redsun Kausar (cold chain). “Now that these sub-brands have been formed, we are going to push these brands from this year. Our focus this year will be to have an aggressive go-to-market drive,” he says, adding the company’s annual spend on branding currently accounts for 3 per cent of their revenues (growing 40 per cent year-on-year), and will remain the same for next year as well.

For FY10 ended June 30, Gati reported revenues of Rs 751.22 crore, as compared with Rs 630.16 crore in FY09.

It expects to clock revenues of about Rs 1,000 crore during the current financial year and touch Rs 2,500 by 2014.