'Our cricket sponsorship started when sponsor of India-Pak series backed out last minute'

"At the beginning of the 21st century, when India was transitioning towards Ayurveda, spirituality and yoga, our product made an instant connection with the western countries,” said Arjun Ranga, Managing Director of Cycle Pure Agarbathi, at the Pitch CMO Summit held in Bengaluru.

While engaging in a fireside chat with Vaishali Verma, Chief Executive Officer - India, Initiative, he also added that Brazil was one of the biggest markets for the company.

Ranga also disclosed that he relies on his own in-house creative team, both for digital as well as offline, for campaigns. “Media is something that I'm still not able to wrap my head around. So, I'm not going to touch it in the near future,” he smiled.

The Mysuru-based NR Group is known for the popular Cycle brand of agarbathis (incense sticks) and has also diversified into other products like sambrani, turmeric, kumkum among others.

Arjun Ranga’s grandfather N. Ranga Rao started the agarbathi business from his home in the 1940s. Today, NR Group clocks a turnover of Rs 2,000 crore with a strong presence in 75 countries.

Apart from agarbathis in 2020, Rangsons, a part of NR Group also launched TMS Mindful, a depression treatment clinic. It has six centres in the US and four in India, including two in Gurgaon, and two in Bangalore.

The group was one of the first agarbathi manufacturers to shift from tin packaging to cardboard packaging, which brought about a drastic reduction in the cost of production, waste, and ultimately even in the cost of the final product.

Later, it diversified by entering into the manufacturing and marketing of functional and aircare lifestyle products by launching Ripple Fragrances Private Limited. In 2011, NR Group also made a presence in defence solutions with Rangasons Defence Solutions, following which began the company’s diversification into IO, and solar-powered irrigation.

Sharing the strategy of his group for wooing the younger generation, Ranga, whose company holds nearly 1 ⁄ 3 share in the agarbathi market, said, “As long as there is God, agarbathi will be there. My challenge is that our brand remains at the top of people’s minds when they pray for the well-being of their family. However, the way we communicate with consumers has evolved over the years.”

“We believe in our brand purpose and ensure that we connect with the purpose instead of the consumer. Over 75% Indian households have used one of the products at one point in time. We make sure that we are there top of mind for them to consume the product,” he says.

“It's a very deep-rooted, emotional need that we are selling as a product into which we had to rapidly adapt to changing times. We had to mechanize quite a few of our processes to ensure consistency in the product. So, we started to look at methods of modernization as early as 1970 on the supply to inside and then on the market side as well,” Ranga elaborated.

On the changing digital landscape, he shared, “We think agarbathi is not a significant part of our lives, but every mother prays for the well-being of our children. The hopes of a nation are intertwined with our products. Fragrance is quite significant. It's a very deep-rooted, emotional need that we are selling as a product into which we have to rapidly adapt to changing times. We had to mechanize quite a few of our processes to ensure consistency in the product. So, we started to look at methods of modernization as early as 1970 on the supply to the inside and then on the market side as well.”

“We are even using AI for sales forecasts. On the consumer side, we still remain traditional. In the year 2000, our brand awareness was a mere 3% which has gone up to 27%. And it has happened due to modernization and strengthening of the supply chain and how we communicate with customers,” he asserts.

When asked why and how his brand ventured into sports sponsorship, Ranga says, “I have been a sportsman throughout. Our cricket connection happened in 2004 for the India-Pakistan series with Ten Sports channel. We got a call from their media agency to inquire if we would like to sponsor the tournament. The original sponsor had backed out a day before the tournament. The media agency knew that approaching big companies at the last minute would not help as they have several levels of approval. Being a family-run business, they thought it would be easier to get through. It was a unique proposal. I thought for a moment and then decided to accept the proposal. Our spots were Super Sixes and Third umpire. Our campaign for the third umpire spot said: every person has a reason to pray.

Later on, the company started promoting all major sports, ranging from shooting to hockey and golf to cricket.

He also spoke about sustainability during the chat. “Our brand purpose since 1948 has remained tremendously ethical with values such as transparency and ethical business practices. We realized that to deliver hope and a better future for children we have to keep our promises sustainable. That’s when we started manufacturing zero-carbon incense to offset our plastic footprint offset.

“By 2024, we will be completely offsetting our plastic footprint. We use clipboards in our packaging material. We have oceans, occupational health and safety certificates across the board. So, sustainability is something that we are kind of ingrained in the organization's culture and ethos and this year going forward, we will include that in the performance metrics of senior management.”

Ranga also spoke about the challenges he has encountered and how he has been turning them into opportunities. “I think the first opportunity came to us in the year 2000-2001 when all the multinationals like HUL and ITC expanded their footprint and came to this so-called relatively unorganized category.

“And that's when we realized we are fulfilling people's emotional prayer needs along with their fragrance requirements. That's when we created the home fragrance brand. Guess we stood out in the lead home fragrance brand in lifestyle, our own brand in the country, and we created a functional air care brand.”

Moving into multi-product marketing was a challenge, Ranga said. “It was a big learning curve, and took us almost five to six years.”

“The third and most humbling experience was the whole e-commerce and digital way that we went the last five years. It has been a rude awakening and a fantastic learning experience for me about how that entirely stood as a completely different ball game altogether than what we do in the brick-and-mortar side of it.”