Innovative Foods Limited (IFL) manufactures and markets convenience/frozen foods under the brand name, Sumeru. An extensive range of vegetarian and nonvegetarian items including sea food are offered on the frozen food platter by the brand. Mithun Appaiah, CEO, Innovative Foods Pvt Ltd tells us more on the brand’s POS initiatives.

Frozen food is still niche in the Indian market. How do you think Sumeru as a brand can make a difference at the point of sales level?

Point of sale initiatives at retail segment is the most preferred option for our category of foods as consumers tend to make important buying decisions at retail stores. About 70% of their choice depends on what catches their attention. Even pre-purchase plans can eventually change with an eyecatching display at the store. Instead of opting for standalone solutions, we can go in for in-store branding on freezers, danglers, in-store sampling and other forms of visibility. We invest, 15% into advertising of which around 2% is for point of purchase. We use point of sales initiatives mainly for our new product range.

The category is still at the nascent stage. What kind of challenges do you counter? Do you think in-store branding solutions can tackle them?

Positioning products through in-store branding initiatives poses its own challenges as frozen foods must meet temperature requirements. Logistics is another challenge. Besides, consumers have a lot of mental block in accepting frozen products mainly on nutritional grounds.

Top retail stores and modern trade stores play a crucial role in creating conversations between brand and consumers. They will get better margins in frozen food category than others, hence they would do well in supporting frozen foods.

Frozen food calls for a different level of packaging, advertising and marketing. Your views?

Currently our product ranges from differently flavoured French fries to chicken, sea food and pork range. We are going to drive lot of visibility activities inside the stores mainly for branding, branded kiosks in modern retail outlets. We believe sampling activities for new launches will be more beneficial in frozen food segment. We are planning to bundle new samples with existing fast moving products. It may include cross category such as oils, sugar and vegetables.

We want to differentiate ourselves through packaging. We are revamping the packaging and

presentation by going beyond traditional colours such as green, orange, yellow and red this time. Premium look, clear information and other interesting concepts of packaging will be included.

With a varied range of products, how is your geographical reach both in Indian and overseas markets?

Even though market penetration is low in the category, we are able to touch upon over 150 towns, including tier I and tier II cities in India. Our reach spans from both national and international QSR chains in India, 5-star restaurants, caterers and retail outlets. We meet all stringent quality norms of international standards and hence, we are able to garner all major QSRs in India. Going ahead, we want to focus on areas of HoReCa (Hotel, Restaurants and Cafes) business and retail segments.

We have embarked our presence in the Indian export market segment overseas including USA, Canada and UK, Singapore, Fiji, Dubai and Nepal. In these regions, we have demand for parathas, samosas, spring rolls and green peas as well.

It’s been 15 years of your presence in frozen food category. How do you plan to further cater to consumers?

Retail segment remains our large revenue earning pie which is over 70% and the rest is divided among QSRs, exports and institutional business in the order. We are expecting 50% growth in 2018-19 financial year. Our focus will be on improving, sales system process, distribution and seamless availability of products. Our emphasis will be on new product development and in-store activities. We have to gear up to counter competition, especially from McCann, Venky and Yummy’s. With bigwigs like ITC and Amul entering frozen food market, it goes to show that there is potential in this category.