Being organically an iconic cola brand, you are fast expanding your non-fizz category. What are the commercial standpoints of these newly-launched products?

Aquarius GLUCOCHARGE is a product of enhanced hydration while Minute Maid Vitingo is our extension as “nutritious dialutables” in the already-existing ready-to-drink category, Minute Maid. We plan to make Aquarius GLUCOCHARGE a mass brand in the next eight months across the nation and Vitingo will have commercial proposition targeted towards selected regional markets. What’s interesting for us is that both these products will be a value addition to our standpoint that we also dabble with health benefits. We are reaching across the length of the country in 3 more months and will closely watch the consumer acceptance before making any change in the retail strategies.

What will be your preferred channel in retail?

As we plan to bring them out as mass brands, the preference will be General Trade. Our preferred B2B formats will lead the role in achieving omnipresence in GT market of India. We would like Aquarius to play the growth engine for our company in next one year. Since we are taking Vitingo to selective markets, it may take longer but we have plan to make it big.

How do you maintain your category focus that contributes to your double-digit growth?

What we believe is that one doesn’t do double digit growth only by brands but the right mix of brands. We have always maintained our balanced portfolio in sparkling and non-sparkling categories. It’s interesting for us to observe that as Maaza is a winner in all mango drink categories, Minute Maid is climbing up as a non-Mango category. Our sole objective today is to bring a concept to market along with scaling it up, without having to invest in long span of time.

To fasten turnaround time and to expedite retail rollouts, what model are you following internally?

I am happy to share that, post demonetization, we have launched a system that we call an “Incubation Model”. Through this system, we have brought down the time to turn around a “commercially launchable product” in less than 3 months and post retail rollout, we can receive data and analytics on consumer behavior in less than a year. This way, we are able to handle multiple product launches in a year.