An up-and-coming brand in the beverages market, Paper Boat clearly stands out by offering authentic Indian drinks, filling the cultural and culinary vacuum in the metros and other cities. Sarita Gujar catches up with Neeraj Kakkar, Founder & CEO, Hector Beverages to understand the brand's journey, its USP and plans to penetrate the retail marketplace.

What is your assessment of the beverages market in India, particularly health beverages? What difference would Hector Beverages make in this dynamic market?

The current beverages market is a medley of subtle innovations, each trying to differentiate itself from the last. Certainly, these are exciting times, especially for a company like ours. But we wouldn't right away brand ourselves as a functional health drink. We fancy ourselves as more of an'authentic' functional beverages brand. We make drinks that would generally be made in family gatherings and festivals. And we try to make them as authentic as we possibly can. We constantly tweak them to perfect our recipes, taking cues from our consumers and troubleshooting them to make them as close to the real deal as possible. But even if we are not a health drink company, we do try to make our drinks as'healthy' as we possibly can without ruining the recipe.

'Paper Boat' was initially introduced for in-flight consumers. What was the strategy behind that move? Do you plan to take the brand to the departmental and kirana stores?

In-flight is only a channel for us. Our foray into the consumer space was with departmental stores (and some kirana stores). So we always have and always will exist in those avenues. It's only recently that we have expanded our reach to include airports, offices and similar channels.

Which are the target markets for Paper Boat?

Right now, we intend to target most metropolitan cities and other up-and-coming cultural melting pots. Basically, anywhere where people live far from home and long for drinks that they had back home, growing up. Our job is to fill that cultural and culinary vacuum. It could be right here in India or somewhere across our now much smaller planet.

Throw some light on the name, product design and brand communication of Paper boat.

The name came up as a plain call-back to the simplest moments of our lives - The first time we made a paper boat. The sense of achievement and joy that came with seeing a paper boat float. The Tagore poem entitled'Paper Boats' also served as an inspiration. The poem tells the story of a boy making paper boats with messages written in them and sending them into a stream of water. The child hopes that they reach far and wide, into hitherto unknown, strange lands. He also hopes someone in this land picks up that boat, reads its message and becomes his friend. The planned serendipity of the poem stuck with us and we too ended up making a Paper Boat that reached far and wide. Here the drink itself is the message. Not to mention that we made our share of faraway friends, thanks to our'boats'.

The product design brief that we shared with Elephant Design was to make a simple interpretation of this thought and what a stellar job they ended up doing. They elevated the brand instantly with Paper Boat's now signature minimalistic yet standout visual appeal.

The brand communication also had to reflect what the brand stood for'drinks and memories'. Each one of our drinks have a memory attached to it. Everyone remembers the first time they had a particular drink. So our communication also tries to tap into these very moments, reminding one of beginnings and a simpler time. So be it on digital or print, we try to make sure that we talk about those memories.

'Paper Boat' serves traditional Indian drinks and flavours. Would you retain this essence even as you expand the product portfolio?

At Paper Boat, our motto is to serve traditional, authentic beverages. Turning local favourites into national and global hits. The range is Indian because we started out here. Not to mention that there are hundreds of delicious drinks peppered all across our subcontinent. So even when we expand our repertoire, we will never fall short. We are planning a sum total of 25 drinks for Paper Boat, which will all be authentically Indian. But if we were to go more international with our portfolio, we would still be following our motto of serving authentic local drinks.

How do you plan to promote the brand among a wider audience? What would be your in-store branding strategy?

There is a TVC underway and a more extensive digital campaign in the works. We are trying to hit a sweet spot between new and traditional media, with a slight incline towards social. Digital is what we strongly believe in. The brand is built on stories and we want to go and tell these stories.

What is function of shoppaperboat.com?

shoppaperboat.com is our e-commerce portal for people to order our drinks from the comfort of their homes and get it delivered right to their respective doorsteps. This facility is available in 65 cities all over the country. We are hoping to add more cities as the demand grows. The inception of shoppaperboat.com happened a few months ago primarily because we are a growing company and our distribution is only restricted to top metros and still expanding. Reaching out to people, where our product is not distributed at the local departmental stores, was the main objective of launching the e-commerce segment for paper boat.