24 Mantra: Entering general trade

Abstract

The organic packaged food industry is a niche and emerging market in India. The market size for organic produce in India in 2016 was INR 533 million, growing at 17%. It is expected to reach INR 871 million by 2021. Sresta Natural Bioproducts, the parent brand of 24 Mantra, is the market leader at 28% market share . Organic products have long faced the challenge of entering General Trade. In GT, the biggest problem any organic brand faces are direct competition with non-organic products that are available on the shelf. This occurs due to a lack of awareness of benefits. The challenges range from the selection of a distribution system to negotiating margin to in-store promotions to competitive prices. Through our analysis, we intend to decide the range of products to be launched in GT based on consumers’ perception (from target audience: mothers) about each category and the relevance of organic proposition in it. 24 Mantra in its communication has always targeted mothers, as they consider them to be making the key decisions in a household for the food category. Given 24 Mantra’s vast product line, there will be difficulty in launching so many products as organic food is a category where awareness levels are lower, and no general trade/Kirana store would like to fill their limited space with products presenting ambiguous propositions irrespective of higher margins (most of Indian Kiranas being less than 400 sq. ft). In our primary research, we conducted multiple depth interviews with the targeted audience, i.e. mothers, to understand perceptions about the organic products in different categories of food. Through this, we intended to see which all product categories does the target consider the “organic” proposition to be important enough for to pay a surged price, compared to the usual “famous” brands (market leaders or pioneers). Additionally, we benchmarked the prices with three competing brands.