Dabur India launches Chyawan Junior

Dabur India hopes to shift its young consumers of Chyawanprash to Chyawan Junior, the recently-launched milk beverage mix.

Chyawan Junior offers similar nutrients as the company's ayurveda-based health supplement and targets kids, who shy away from Chyawanprash due to its taste, said the company.

However, Chyawan Junior is aimed at tapping the milk beverages market, which is estimated to be Rs 1,500 crore, more than three-fourth of Dabur's turnover of Rs 2,000 crore. This segment is expected to grow at 15 per cent in 2007-08.

When asked if this could result in a possible cannibalisation of Dabur's brand Chyawanprash, K K Rajesh, executive vice president, Dabur India, said, "We had repositioned Chyawanprash, a year ago, as a product that should be taken by everyone in the family. Chyawan Junior is a different product that is aimed at kids, out of whom many avoided the product because of its taste."

The penetration of the Rs 175 crore brand, Chyawanprash, in Indian households is just 4 per cent and the company feels that it offers a lot of potential to fill the market gaps by producing more variants.

In the past one year, the company had also introduced Chyawanprakash, a sugar free variant of Chyawanprash. Chyawan Junior is expected take the Chyawanprash brand forward as it overcomes the barrier of taste.

"We have been working on this product for a couple of years with large investments in its research and development and it would be quite a while before we recover that investment. We would first be test-marketing this product in Maharashtra and West Bengal. Depending on the responses we receive in these states we would think of expanding this category further. Maharashtra and West Bengal have been selected for this purpose because they have higher consumption of milk drink mix of brown colour and white colour respectively" said Rajesh.

However, Chyawan Junior cannot be officially considered an extension of Chyawanprash as its ingredients are unique. Sources in the company saId that Dabur could not name its product Chyawanprash Junior because it had other ingredients such as chocolate.

But the company has developed and marketed the product with the purpose of expanding the reach of its Chyawanprash brand.

Dabur's competitors in the milk beverage mix segment include Complan, Horlicks and Bournvita. Chyawan Junior has also been competitively priced at Rs 113 a bottle.

The product's association to Chyawanprash is expected to differentiate it from other brands in this segment as well as boost Dabur's Chyawanprash portfolio.