Less then two years after its launch, and it's already running out of juice. Leh Berry seabuckthorn juice is not winning any popularity stakes in India. In fact, it's fared rather dismally in the ninth Brand Derby as well. Of the 88 respondents, little over 20 per cent considered it a successful brand launch. In contrast, more than 44 per cent proclaimed it unsuccessful, with 7 per cent dismissing it as the least successful brand.
That's not welcome news to Ladakh Foods, the makers of Leh Berry. But it doesn't come as a complete surprise, either.
"Our brand awareness is low," admits Varun Kumar, director, Ladakh Foods. But, he adds quickly, "Real [Dabur's fruit juice brand] is a seven-year-old brand and Tropicana, too, has been around for far longer. We are just one-and-a-half years old."
The 18 months haven't perhaps been utilised effectively enough. Ladakh Foods was set up in 2002 as a joint venture between a Delhi-based company Compact International and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd and Small Farmers' Agri-Business Consortium.
The technical know-how for the venture was provided by the Defence Research and Development Organisation. The company was set up to provide a commercial platform for the seabuckthorn, a thorny, deciduous plant that grows in the upper Himalayas and is apparently full of goodness and health.
While ambitious plans were announced for the production of cosmetics and other products based on seabuckthorn, LFL started with just one product "" Leh Berry, tetrapacked seabuckthorn juice. LFL bought the fruit from farmers in the Ladakh region, processed the juice at its plant there and then sent it to Bhopal, where it was packed at a Godrej Foods plant.
Introduced at a food exhibition in Delhi in December 2002, Leh Berry was formally launched a few months later at Hyderabad, followed quickly by Nagpur and Pune. The juice was made available in two sizes "" one litre (Rs 50) and 250 ml (Rs 15).
Within some months, though, Ladakh Foods accepted a fundamental truth of the Indian juices market "" that orange and mango will always be the flavour of the month and varieties like sebuckthorn are, at best, passing fancies.
Besides, seabuckthorn's slightly-sour flavour is an acquired taste and not likely to appeal to the palates of Indians, who have a bias for sweet.
Accordingly, it launched two variations under the Leh Berry brand name "" peach-apple and mixed fruit, containing seabuckthorn juice as well. "Leh Berry is the image driver. But the other juices will be the volume drivers," agrees Kumar.
The volumes have come in. According to some estimates, the total juices and nectars market in India is about 182 million litres, growing at a speedy 30 per cent a year.
Of this, carton-based packaging accounts for barely 19 million litres, the rest is sold loose at the juice-wallah. Ladakh Foods' share of this is about 10 per cent "" it will manufacture close to 2.5 million litres of juice this year.
It has helped that Ladakh Foods has concentrated on its distribution "" it is now available in over 20,000 retail outlets in 15 states.
Leh Berry is also served on board Sahara Airlines flights and is available at the defence canteens "" the only branded juice to be sold there. Of course, Kumar admits that the company's 200 distributors offer higher-than-average margins to retailers to stock Leh Berry juices.
The distribution aside, Ladakh Foods also claims to have invested substantially on marketing. Since the launch, the company has spent Rs 3 to 4 crore on marketing activities (turnover till October 2004: Rs 9 crore).
Apart from a television commercial and below-the-line activities, including sampling exercises and point-of-purchase displays, Ladakh Foods also opted for product placements in Hindi films and music videos.
None of these has really registered with customers, though. The television commercial was aired for just two months and print advertisements were taken out only during the festive season last year, when Ladakh Foods introduced a festive pack.
Kumar says Ladakh Foods is caught in a double whammy: the USP of seabuckthorn juice is its medicinal properties, but tom-toming that fact in advertisements will actually hamper sales, since juices in India are consumed more for the taste and as a thirst-quencher, than for their health benefits.
"Our target customers won't drink it as a juice anymore. They'll start treating it as medicine," he laments.
Still, Ladakh Foods is optimistic about the future. The company plans to launch another nine or 10 variants of juice this year and has ambitions of setting up its own manufacturing unit for the production of wine, ketchup, jams and jellies from seabuckthorn.
A potential site for the plant has been identified at Himachal Pradesh, which should start running in 2005-06, although Kumar says it is too early to comment. "We want the juice to be on the breakfast table of every Indian," he declares. You may get them to buy the juice, but will they drink it?
