Parle Agro bets big with ambitious plans for N-joi

Kumarkaushalam in New Delhi

Mr Prakash Chauhan-promoted Parle Agro Ltd is betting on ‘N-joi’ — positioned as ‘real fruit, real milk’ — to further slice open the virgin fruit-milk beverage market. The Mumbai-based company will now launch N-joi (which is present in the Mumbai market)— initially, an ‘Alphonso mango with fresh dairy milk’ variant — in Calcutta shortly and in Delhi early next year, following its launch and test-marketing in markets like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Gujarat, Bangalore, Bhopal and Chennai.

Parle Agro is also planning fresh investments in its Delhi facility (to cater to the northern markets) around March-April 2002, after an investment of Rs 8 crore in establishing an advanced processing plant in Mumbai this year. The company has eleven TetraPak facilities in the country. Initially, the western and southern markets will meet supplies from the Mumbai plant.

Parle Agro will also finalise a creative agency shortly for ‘N-joi’—in all, four creative agencies are said to be pitching for the new account. The budget for national launch campaign — with print, outdoor and television advertising and extensive product sampling — is expected to be upwards of Rs 10 crore.

Says Mr Chauhan: ‘‘The category we’re looking at has the potential to give us volumes more than Frooti (a mango fruity beverage). All markets are giving enthusiastic response — people trying it once are getting hooked on to it.’’

Parle Agro’s Frooti is reported to be over Rs 250-crore turnover a year brand. Frooti’s marketshare is claimed to be 85 per cent in the Tetrapak segment and 29 per cent in the mango beverage category (including bottles and TetraPak). Mango fruit beverage is estimated to account for 91 per cent of the sales of all fruit juice variants while orange juice accounts for only 3.1 per cent.

Further, under the N-joi brand umbrella, the company plans to roll out half-a-dozen milky-fruity variants, including peach-milk, strawberry-milk, pineapple-milk, banana-milk, and cheekoo-milk. N-joi, currently only in dairy-mango variant, is priced at Rs 15 for a 250-ml pack and Rs 55 for 1-litre pack. Parle Agro’s product portfolio includes: Belly mineral water and soda, Appy, Frooti and N-joi.
N-joi will leverage Parle Agro’s enormous distribution reach of 10 lakh outlets, including leading hotels and restaurants, eateries, super-markets, and paan-shops.

N-joi represents Parle Agro’s eventual ambition to carve out a niche in the the domestic liquid-milk market, which is expected to touch $10 billion in 2005, according to a McKinsey report last year.
Moreover, the dairy-fruity product is expected to make Parle’s beverage business immune to seasonal fluctuations. ‘‘The initial consumer feedback suggests that the product is more need-based — like it can be consumed as a snack food product if one gets hungry,’’ says Mr Chauhan. ‘‘This is why we’re launching the product in Delhi in winter.’’

Parle Agro is also expected to build on its first mover advantage with N-joi. Though Frooti remains a dominant mango fruit beverage brand, the pure fruit juice market is increasingly being targeted by companies Like Coca-Cola (which has bottling and TetraPak options for Maaza), PepsiCo (Slice and Duke’s mango), Tropicana, and Dabur (Real fruit juices).

Mr Chauhan adds that the company would consolidate its business in the milk-fruit beverage segment in the next three years before planning any major diversification in other dairy products.
According to sources, the company is also likely to deal in dairy products, which are not easily available in the country.

The company believes that N-joi’s attributes of being a 100 per cent natural cow milk-based product, devoid of any artificial flavours, colours or preservatives, would be healthy even for three-year old kids.

To re-inforce these attributes, Parle Agro has chosen to use the baseline ‘fresh dairy milk’ in its packaging, instead of an ambiguous ‘a dash of milk’, which was used during the earlier sampling exercise.

Earlier, surveys conducted by market research agencies Mode and Drishti threw up interesting insights: In Mumbai, people found it a wholesome answer to their lunch-boxes they missed at home; in Delhi, it was found to be a good accompaniment to aloo parantha; and in Chennai, consumers felt that they could have it between meals, say at 11 am.