Mother Dairy entered the Mumbai market around four years ago and is now poised to figure among the top three ice cream players this year. But with the Mumbai market captured, the subsidiary of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), is now on a national expansion drive.
Dairy products business head at Mother Dairy, Subhashis Basu says the confidence to serve its ice creams to the whole country became evident during the previous year when the test marketing across the nation started showing great results.
To reach out to the national mass, after a gap of three years, the company has just started airing two television commercials.
The company is planning to cater to the top 25 cities in the country which account for 80% of the country's Rs 1800 crore ice cream market. “We are the leader in New Delhi, but it’s time that we addressed our national people. The real insight behind coming with this new commercials is to compliment our national expansion. Our ice creams are pure and no flavoured inputs are part of it. That is why our campaign also underlines the basic theme as 'real good'.
After the national expansion, Basu is expecting his vertical to clock a top line of Rs 900 crore in the next four to five years. Ice creams now contribute around Rs 275 crore to the dairy product business and the aim is to keep growing at 25%, said Munish Soni, GM, marketing at Mother Dairy.
Mother Dairy follows a typical FMCG distribution model to reach to the consumers for its ice creams. "We would be extending our brand reach and depth to stimulate consumption using traditional retail, our own vending carts, our own exclusive booths and kiosks in high throughput locations etc. This year, we are also investing disproportionately on asset placement both in retail and vending to drive growth across all geographies and reach out to a larger chunk of consumers,” added Basu..
A key challenge for the company would be to topple the local players in different states across the country. For example, Gujarat and New Delhi together account for one third of the country's Rs 1800 crore (approx) ice cream market and in the former state Vadilal is one of the prominent players. In Mumbai, Vadilal, Amul and Kwality Walls are the players leading the race and Mother Dairy is very near to break into that club soon, according to the company's own market research. India's ice cream market has been typically fragmented and in the regional pockets it is the local players who are ruling the market..
Mother Diary, to create visibility in the national map, is going to focus more on retail sales compared to bulk sales. “Some bulk deals may not offer me to sell it in my packaged way and chances are high that it will be used just as commodity. So my brand is not getting to use that platform, so at this point, we are focusing more on our packaged sales which will enhance our branding,” he added.
It has though tied up with two leading flight caterers which will leverage the brand among all major national carriers in the country at the moment. “This is unique arrangement as the ice cream being served will be in the Mother Dairy branded packages,” added Basu. The ice creams are also available while traveling via Indian Railways.
"One of the challenges in going national, was to keep the balance of heritage of our brand and yet be contemporary enough to tease the target audience, said Basu. And that is why the company got O&M Delhi team on board to create the new commercial for them. Ravi Udayawar has directed the commercials.
"Before even we were present in Mumbai, we used to buy a lot of national media space but we figured out in the course of time that without being present in those market these media campaigns did not yield us any result,” said Basu. According to him the marketing spend, which is about five% of its top line, is also going to see a substantial rise in the coming years.
