After growing at over 48% this year, Cream bell, a collaboration of Jaipuria Group (the franchisees of Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Costa Coffee, and KFC in India) and French dairy major, Candia, is gearing up for the next round of action.
Besides announcing a home delivery service, across the country, Cream bell has established a new plant in Goa, with a capacity to produce 1.8 million litres of ice-cream per month. With this, their capacity will go upto 10 million litres from last year?s 7 million litres. The new capacity has been added mainly to cater to the west and southern market. So far, the company was only concentrating on the northern belt in the national capital region, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, Uttaranchal, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
Unfortunately, despite its size, India has never been a huge market for ice-creams, especially for branded products. The branded market is an estimated 100 million litre per annum that is roughly valued at Rs 1,000 crore according to CMIE. The total ice-cream market (branded and non-branded) is Rs 2,500 crore and the branded market is expected to grow at 12-15% annually.
The peak sales season starts from April and lasts through June, when producers get into an overdrive. Some big players in the sector include Hindustan Unilever?s Kwality Wall?s, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation?s Amul, Mother Dairy, Baskin-Robbins and Cream bell.
According to market sources, Amul enjoys the largest share (38%) of the 100-million litre per annum ice-cream market in India, followed by Kwality Wall?s (14%) and Vadilal, the third largest player in the ice- cream market with a share of 12%. Mother Dairy (8%) has a strong base in the markets of the north and has forayed in the eastern and western markets in the last few years. Cream bell claims a share of 5-6%. The distribution, for all ice-cream brands is through push carts, dedicated ice-cream parlours, modern retail formats, and now, in case of Cream bell, also through the home delivery mode.
As children and the youth are the target consumers for this impulse category, ice-cream manufacturers try to woo them with attractive product packing. Last year, Kwality Wall?s relaunched Selections in new tubs, Mother Dairy changed its logo a few years ago, while Amul launched an insulated thermal bag for the take away segment. Recently, Cream bell has tied up with Walt Disney to brand its kids range as Cream bell Disney.
Lately, due to the rising health consciousness among Indian consumers, probiotic and sugar-free range of ice-creams have become quite popular. For example, Amul Prolife and Amul Sugar Free, launched last year, that expect to grow at 10% per annum.
With input cost going up and growing competition from regional players, much will depend on innovation? be it in product development or delivery. Currently, the per capita consumption of ice-cream in India is 250 ml per annum compared with 22 litre per annum in the US or 800 ml even in neighbouring Pakistan.