Marcio plans online-only brands

Mumbai, Dec 13 (PTI) To cash in on huge opportunitiesin the digital space, homegrown consumer goods company Maricois planning to create a number of...

Mumbai, Dec 13 (PTI) To cash in on huge opportunitiesin the digital space, homegrown consumer goods company Maricois planning to create a number of brands purely for onlinesales over the next few years.

"For consumer packaged goods (CPG), digitisation ismore of an opportunity rather than a disruption threat. WhileCPG has been lagging in digitisation, I think there is hugeopportunities not just for productivity and efficiency butalso for long-term growth," Marico MD & CEO Saugata Gupta toldan IAMAI-organised industry meet here today.

Gupta said Marico is viewing digitisation as anopportunity for accelerating growth rather than a disruption.

"We recently launched a brand internally to test thismarket. What we intend to do in future is actually have aseries of digital brands which will be only in e-commerce andlimited physical availability at modern trade. We advertisedthis brand 100 per cent non-mass," he added.

The city-based compay recently launched a mealreplacement beverage Saffola Nutri-Shake that is a digital-only product, he said.

Reportedly, Marico, which sells hair oil brands likeParachute and Nihar, has created a new team internally calledthe Engine 2 that will enable it to create and incubate newcategories.

"It is at the preliminary stage of digitisation. Asfar as revenue generation is concerned, we are setting up anew team that will work in a different way, by experimentingwith some horizon projects of tomorrow. The risk appetite willbe higher there," he said.

He said between now and the next two-three yearsMarico may start a lot of initiatives, some of them will bedigital brands, some of them will be disruptive.

"It is not that digitisation is happening only inEngine 2, it is more of a revenue generation which is theEngine 2," he added.

On the success of digital brands, he said, "if afterthree years, I've two-three scaled up digital brands that willbe a big success. I don't think in the next three years theywill have enough revenue to actually move the needle but Ithink from here if two-three initiatives can contribute beyond5 per cent revenue by 2022, that's good enough."He observed that given the digital penetration,companies can have their business models in both offline andonline in an effective manner.

"You can have brick and mortar and digital brands co-existing, and given the nature of the domestic market, the twomodels will co-exist. It is not that one will eat up theother. I think the two models have to work parallely just liketraditional kirana and modern trade," he said.

Identifying go-to-market as a huge untappedopportunity in terms of digitisation, Gupta said the companyhas invested significantly into this and has integrated thesupply chain opting for a pull rather than push approach. PTIDS BENBEN.

This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.

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