‘Won’t be part of summer price war’
In conversation with Manish Bandlish, MD, Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt Ltd, on summer marketing plans, new product launches and D2C foray
Q] Mother Dairy recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. How difficult is it for a brand that old to stay relevant?
To remain relevant, brands must periodically refresh themselves, both in their communication as well as from the point of view of product and quality. You also need to be able to reach the consumer on the platforms that they are comfortable transacting in, for example – q-commerce and e-commerce platforms, which have grown over the last 7-10 years. You don’t want the young generation to reject you simply because you are not available on a certain channel.
Q] You commemorated 50 years of Mother Dairy by launching 30 products. This year, how many product launches do you have in mind?
We will continue to launch a minimum of 30 products each year; not all of the variants will necessarily succeed. For example, we compulsorily launch new variants of ice cream every year. This year we decided to launch Pudina flavoured Chaach as well as Jeera Raita and the high-protein ProMilk in Delhi-NCR, among other things.
Q] Which are the previous launches that have been a raging success?
From last year’s launches, Tilla Kulfi was a big success, so we have decided to double our capacity this year. Our Rabri range is also performing extremely well. Our strength lies in identifying the customer’s taste, and our R&D team does it really well. For example, our marketing and R&D teams searched for local Kulfi carts that sell extremely well. We identified the taste and executed at least 5-10 iterations before finalising our product. This is what we call localisation; otherwise, it is much like a synthetic taste.
Besides that, our curd is doing well; we are market leaders in Delhi. In cow milk too, we are leading, with more than 90% market share in Delhi and growing by more than 10% every year at a CAGR of 15%. We have created almost a Rs 3000-crore category in the last seven to eight years for this particular portfolio. Along with that, cup curd is doing extremely well in Mumbai and Calcutta. Mishti Doi happens to be one of our best products; in fact, nobody has been able to replicate that taste so far.
