'Our aim is to offer a better mineral water experience'

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Tata Tea, the Rs 4,392-crore beverage company of the Tata group, is serious about its new initiative—water. The foray is being led by subsidiary Mount Everest Mineral Water Limited (MEMW). Mount Everest’s only product Himalayan has been relaunched in Mumbai and more is in the pipeline, according to its managing director and chief executive officer Pradeep Poddar. The company is not ruling out the possibility of acquisitions in its drive to scale up quickly. Despite an earlier shaky start with Glaceau, the US energy drinks maker, where Tata Tea had acquired a 30% stake only to sell it off last year to Coca-Cola for $1.02 billion, the group is pulling out all stops to capture consumer’s mindspace with Himalayan. In an interview with Viveat Susan Pinto, Poddar outlines what Mount Everest is doing with Himalayan. Excerpts:

What was the motive behind the makeover of Himalayan?

It is a holistic makeover that endeavours to create a leader in the natural mineral water category in a format that is aspirational. We took six months to relaunch the product. A lot of hard work went into it. A new bottle shape was designed. We came up with coloured caps. We came up with the right moulds, etc. But one thing that we didn’t change is the price of the product.

If this was the physical side of the relaunch, the softer side was not ignored. What is the story of the brand, how do we capture it in different ways, what labels can be used, et al? We came up with five labels that depict the flora of its origin. I am talking about the region (foothills of the Shivalik Mountains in the Himalayas) from where the water is derived. We have a perennial source of water there by virtue of our investment in the Mount Everest as we acquired it along with the brand Himalayan last year. The water from the source seeps down the entails of the Himalayas at the foothills of the Shivalik Mountains with a recharge of more than a billion litres a year. It is pristine in nature since it’s protected from contamination by multiple layers of clay. So what we are talking about here is not any water, but natural mineral water in the truest sense of the word.

Is the price of the product not on the higher side since the competition is substantially lower priced?