Rasna, one of the world’s first manufacturers of instant fruit-based concentrate, believes in giving its consumers what they want. Today’s consumer has become very health conscious and wants to go back to their ethnic roots with natural ingredients like honey, essential oil, spice oil, badam powder etc. Keeping this in mind, with a promise of no chemicals and preservatives, Rasna has given birth to a new brand called ‘Rasna Native Haat’.
Rasna Native Haat comes with a one-line promise to consumers to, ‘go back to nature’. This is best exemplified in the product offerings Rasna Native Haat, Aampanna, Shikanji which are available in powder form as well as ready to drink form. Now as an addition to the product portfolio the brand has launched Rasna Native Haat Honey Vita and Badam Vita Powder and Honey in following SKUs:
-Honey Vita (Chocolate Flavour) – 18g, 100g (75g+25gFree), 600g (450g+150gFree), 500g
-Badam Vita (Badam Flavour) – 12g, 200g
-Honey (Natural) – 750g, 500g, 250g, 50g
To further promote the products, Rasna Native Haat is has announces its new Brand Ambassador, Saina Nehwal, who has shot a TV Commercial for both, Honey and Honey Vita products.
Speaking about the new brand ambassador Piruz Khambatta Chairman of Rasna Pvt. Ltd said, “We are extremely happy to collaborate with Saina Nehwal for our new ad campaign. Saina embodies the attributes of Rasna’s Native Haat range which focuses on health products that are chemical and preservatives free. We are committed to providing our consumers with new and innovative products.”
Saina Nehwal speaking about her association with Rasna said, “Rasna is one of the most trusted brands in India. It has been one of my favourite drinks growing up. I am thrilled to associate with the brand for Honey and Honey Vita under the Rasna Native Haat umbrella that focuses on natural and healthy products.”
Khambatta shared his vision about the new range of products exclusively with Indiaretailing.com on the sidelines of the unveiling event. “It’s a challenge with many of the marketers today to understand the consumer trends. When we did our research, we found out that lot of consumers from the rich poor and the middle class believed that Indianness in good in food. They wanted to move back to the roots. Across categories with our research we found out honey was one area which has not been used to a great extent and honey-based products are less in the market. We thought as a beverage company we can introduce a lot of honey-based products. Before doing that we also thought of introducing honey itself,” he said.
“Moving ahead with our R&D we also started developing honey-based products. We saw that hot beverage and milk fortifiers were a bigger market than juices and there was still a gap in that area. The idea was simple – to replace sugar with honey which is healthy for children. So, we launched India’s first milk fortifier with chocolate and honey shakti called as ‘Honey Vita’. Then we researched and saw that almonds are the natural health products and we made ‘Badam Vita’ which has real badam. Our products do not carry any preservatives or colours and carry the richness of being natural,” he added.
Rasna has seen as an innovative company be it product launch, marketing or distribution and is enviable 100 percent recall and almost 80 percent market share which makes it a role model company
Future Plans
Talking about the company’s future plans, Khambatta says, “We are a very strong company in marketing and distribution and believe that are billed to stay here as a strong player in the market. Our strategies are planned for a long run growth and we don’t mind building up the category in the next five years or so. With this thought in mind we will be launching some new product ranges, which will stay for a longer period. These products will primarily be in the health space segment.”
“The other category we will be focussed on are mass-premium products which refer to premium products in small packs which consumers in the rural areas too can benefit. Nevertheless, we have seen lot of adults are not consuming the health drinks and with this in mind we have developed a range of masala appetisers as adults wants to have a digestive drink before and after their meal. So, you can see that our Rasna masala range will be speaking about the same.”
Every year Rasna – the most popular orange drink of India – sells 500 crore glasses of its product. Its USP is to make premium products at affordable pricing.
Rasna is actively present in the international markets also as Khambatta explains, “If we look at the international markets and its exports, we need to understand one thing clearly – the products made for Indian market may not be successful in other markets. Our export division works on a different level completely. We have studied market we are supplying in and we have customised our packaging according to the country, for example: we have French or Arabic labels. We have flavours which specific markets prefer and the packaging sizes which they want. Even our ad campaigns are specific to the markets we operate. Our strong markets are Middle East, South East Asia and now Africa.”
Distribution Model
Rasna has a complex distribution system because on one side the brand targets small stores and on the other, the whole B2B channel. Different service levels are required to ensure both these areas are well attended to by the brand.
Talking on the retail distribution front, Khambatta decodes the networks saying, “We have a general trade division which has some 200 super stockists which actually cater to smaller stockists in the lower area. So, in a way these 200 super stockists individually would have some 30-40 of their own stockists in their distribution channel. Our direct sales are roughly around 2,000 stockists reaching 3,000+ cities. And then down the line in each of these places we have the salesman going in once in a week etc which ultimately lead to reaching 1.6 million outlets.”
“Apart from this we have supplies to the modern trade division which we call B2B players like Walmart and Metro etc. We also cater to B2C players like Reliance. We are also active with our sales on e-commerce portals including Amazon. And lastly, there is the distribution channel which reaches schools and colleges,” he concludes.
