The Mother's Recipe brand, owned by Desai Brothers Limited, now a 4th generation family owned business house with interests in food processing, tobacco, finance, logistics, specialty chemicals, health care & hospitality. Nabamita Chatterjee interviews P. Rajan Mathews, V.P - Sales & Marketing, Desai Brothers Ltd - Food Division about the retailing and shopper marketing strategy of the well-known brand in Indian households. Read on.

How did Mother's Recipe create a niche of its own?

Mother's Recipe epitomises mother's love. It's a brand that strives to bring home the true taste of homemade pickles by ensuring that only the freshest, purest fruits, vegetables and spices are used. Mother's Recipe has a strong presence across India and the global arena especially in the Middle East, Far East, Australia, UK - Europe, US - Canada and Africa, being one of the largest providers of traditional and authentic Indian taste exported to more than 40 countries in the world.

Mother's Recipe introduced whole new product categories to include many of the components that complete a traditional Indian meal. Mother's Recipe is now an entire cooking and culinary experience. It includes twelve categories of products - pickles, cooking and condiment pastes, curry & gravy pastes, chutneys, blended spices, ready-to-cook mixes, ready to eat, instant breakfast mixes, ready to fry products, curry powders, mango pulp and canned foods in 150 different variants.

How do you connect with shoppers at Modern Trade?

In Modern Trade, we are listed and present in all the Modern Trade Outlets and a dominant player in all the categories.

Mother's Recipe products market shares vary from 25% to 40%. In Pickles, we are dominating the category and is the only true national brand available across and in more than 43 variants which will go upto 60 variants available in India. But the challenge is to make available all the variants in each store. Most of the retailers stock the local variants but do not stock the other regional variants due to low sales in comparison to the main variants.

Hence, we have planned for a Mother's Recipe Pickle festival in all major hyper markets who will be interested in jointly promoting pickles and traditional foods category. The first Mother's Recipe Pickle festival has been held at MAGNET Hypermarket, Matunga Road, Mumbai. This Mother's Recipe Pickle festival has generated keen interest across the retailers and will be carried out in all major retail stores across in a phased manner. Plans are being finalised for having the pickle festival in Metro C&C (Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata) and Reliance in Mumbai and Pune. We would be extending the same to other retailers in different cities.

Tell us about the extensive coverage with General trade

In General Trade, the expansion of the retail outreach has been a continuous effort and today we have a coverage of more than two lakh retail outlets in all the metros, Tier 1and tier 2 cities and has presence in most of the district headquarters.

What are the growth drivers at retail touch-points?

Mother's Recipe being a premium and market leaders believe in driving the category. Most of our efforts are at creating the Brand Experience for the consumer either at the point of purchase or at other places where there are possible interactions. Such events like Mother's Recipe Pickle festival will make brands and retailers true partners for driving growth and consumption. Retailers should be flexible and should be willing to go the extra mile for ensuring the category growths.

Before introducing any new category, we at DBL Foods educate the category heads on the new products by giving samples, making them visit the manufacturing locations, make DBL Foods R&D personnel meet the retailer's category personnel. This also creates a close bond and goodwill for the brand'Mother's Recipe'. We also work with the category persons for developing the decision tree for the category and the best place for the brand and category.

What was your turnover for FY 2014-15 and the target for the next fiscal?

The size of the organised pickle market is 24,000 MT valued at around Rs 400 crores and Mother's Recipe has a market share of 25% based on Euromonitor estimates. The DBL - Foods Division turnover in FY 2014-15 was around Rs 200 crores and we are targeting a growth of 30% in the next financial year.

Tell us about your future in-store promotions?

Mother's Recipe is the custodian of traditional taste. All its communications and promotions are cantered on reiterating this unique aspect. If India is a land in a perpetual state of celebration then Mother's Recipe is part of it. It celebrates all festivities where food is the important part of the celebration and culture. Whether it is Pongal in Tamil Nadu or Baisaki in the North or Onam in Kerala or Bihu in Assam; Mother's Recipe is part of the celebration and centric to the occasion. Mother's Day has been a major promotional day for the brand Mother's Recipe and this year we had an innovative promotion in Mumbai wherein we invited mothers to share or spend a day with children who have not experienced Mother's Love. This will become an annual feature for Mother's Recipe to encourage its consumers to share the Mother's Love.

What are the new products and categories to be launched?

Mother's Recipe, with strong distribution in place, is ready to launch new product categories like Ready-To-Eat:Mother's Recipe RTE foods in the domestic market are slated for launch this year with 10 exciting variants.

Culinary & cooking pastes category, ready to cook spice/gravy mixes, chutneys and instant mixes: Mother's Recipe has strong presence in the Instant Mixes Category with its innovative Instant Poha Mix, Upma Mix, Dhokla Mix and Vermicelli Payasam Mix and are launching new on the go instant mixes.

Mother's Recipe has launched its Food Services this year and is concentrating on the large segment of catering and QSRs. It has tied up and is in talks with most of the large caterers, five star properties, restaurants and will initiate the tie-ups with QSRs as the products are launched.