Pride of India Brands: How Radico Khaitan celebrates spirit of Bharat with liquor range

"Building a brand is like raising a child. It requires a lot of patience and care and effort to make it grow over the years," says Amar Sinha, COO, Radico Khaitan, one of the leading liquor companies in India. Radico Khaitan is among the 500 Indian companies being honoured at the inaugural Pride of India Brand awards, by the exchange4media group. The Pride of India Brand awards celebrates the best of Bharat and the world-class Make in India companies it has produced.

Radico Khaitan began life as the Rampur distillery, which dated back to pre-Independence India. It was purchased in 1972 for Rs 16 lakh by Dr Lalit Khaitan and produced the base spirits and alcohol for some of the leading liquor brands of the world. Abhishek Khaitan, Dr Khaitan’s son, joined the family business in 1997 and it was then that both father and son duo invited Amar Sinha, formerly VP Sales at Shaw Wallace, to join the leadership team. Since then, the company hasn’t looked back.

The name ‘Radico Khaitan’ was coined in 1999 from Rampur (Ra) Distillery (Di) Company (Co) as the owners desired to transform from being a commodities firm to a branded enterprise. Another motivation for the change in name was to give the company a more contemporary and international appeal. Today, the company is listed among the Fortune 500 companies by Fortune India.

Sinha recalls Radico’s first campaign for the company’s first-ever in-house brand, 8PM, in the year 1998. “We launched it with a TVC, which was a huge success. Not only did the product become an instant smash hit, the commercial, which portrayed how even foes become friends when the clock struck eight, made a big impact in the advertising industry. It won many major advertising awards and was nominated for the Cannes Lion that year.”

The campaign seems to have worked, given that 8PM sold a record one million cases in the first year of its inception- a record that has yet to be broken by any other brand in India. The 8PM TVC itself was ranked amongst the top 100 commercials of the century by industry publications at the time.

Continuing this market-focused approach, Radico has been able to establish more than 15 profitable brands, including segment leaders like Magic Moments and Morpheus brandy, organically over the previous decade which went on to become successful in their respective categories, and have a presence in close to 90 countries.

"Just in the last few weeks we’ve launched two super-premium brands, and have been running a number of campaigns on different platforms ranging from in-store to digital. People are responding really well,” says Sinha, who admits that digital has become the dominant means of creating buzz around brands.

Radico has been very proactive about marketing its products over the years, through traditional and electronic media. Also, the company is increasingly harnessing the power of the internet. "We've reached out to people through every means. Apart from our advertisements and campaigns, we've sponsored music festivals like Sunburn Music Festival and other events to engage with the youth, especially targeting the millennial market. We also work with influencers on social media platforms to reach out to customers in different geographies and languages," says Sinha.

“We’ve always been very aware of the need for strong marketing, no matter what product you sell. Up to a decade back, we advertised mainly through traditional media, which would make up about 50% of our marketing budget, though of course, we were aware of the growing social media and digital markets," notes Sinha. He added saying, "Today, digital ads and campaigns make up 50% of our spends, while traditional media ads are around 20%, and certainly the share of digital spending will only increase."

However, Sinha believes that traditional media will always have a place in advertising. "When someone sees your brand has big hoardings up and is appearing in newspapers and sponsoring big events, they realise you're a big company and have that brand recall. Digital is great for making the larger market aware of your product and a way to keep your consumers engaged and informed through social media, but traditional media still has the impact."