 "109-year old Hamdard aims to revamp its biz")
The 109-year old FMCG and traditional medicines player Hamdard Laboratories is on an overdrive to revamp its Rs 550 crore business, and double the turnover in two years.
Expect to have a ready-to-drink category beverage under the iconic Rooh Afza brand in about a year. Plus there are big plans for their lifestyle diseases medicine brand 'Nature Wonder', which now has only five to six products under its umbrella.
Rooh Afza is the biggest revenue grosser at Hamdard, with Rs 300 crore turnover and growing at 20 per cent. Mansoor Ali, chied sales and marketing officer, Hamdard said that Rooh Afza enjoyed a 40 per cent market share in the Rs 750-800 crore powdered drinks and syrups segment.
"This segment is clocking a modest 8 per cent growth rate as carbonated drinks, juices and the ready-to-drink segment is clocking a faster growth rate," he added. That is precisely the reason why Hamdard is eyeing to enter the ready-to-drink segment and is also planning brand extensions of Rooh Afza.
It recently launched the Rooh Afza small pack (250 gm) in the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana markets. Launching the small pack here in Ahmedabad, Ali added that with good response from these markets, the company is now eyeing the high potential markets like Gujarat etc with the small packs.
As such nearly 45 per cent of the revenues for the company come from the northern markets of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana. It is also where its three manufacturing plants are located, at Manesar, Ghaziabad and Delhi. The company would run out of capacity at these plants in about two years from now, and is thus looking for a new location for a greenfield project.
This apart Rooh Afza has also drawn up plans for expanding its reach in the medicines category.
"We are looking at targeting the upwardly mobile young segment who now live a stressful life and are looking for herbal or natural solutions. The brand Nature Wonder now has around five or six products. We are now looking at expanding our reach to touch more pharmacies etc."
Nature Wonder would comprise products that would be targeted at the lifestyle diseases segment, like diabetes, heart ailments, hypertension etc.
Hamdard now touches across 450,000 outlets across the country. It has a portfolio of around 600 products of which nearly 580 are medicinal products and the remaining are FMCG.
It also exports to countries like US, Canada, Australia apart from countries in Africa and West Asia. Recently, its Manesar plant got an USFDA approval, Ali claimed.
