NEW DELHI : Nearly two years after buying out PepsiCo’s stake in NourishCo Beverages, Tata Consumer Products Ltd (TCPL) is expanding the distribution of brands such as Himalayan bottled water and Tata Gluco+ besides launching more mass-to-premium beverages such as oral rehydration drink as it eyes a greater share of the ready-to-drink beverages market.
In May 2020, salt-to-tea maker TCPL acquired PepsiCo’s stake in NourishCo Beverages Limited which was a 50:50 joint venture between the two companies. The JV was formed in 2010 to sell healthy and value-added beverages.
However, the brands had a weak start with distribution and reach, lagging for years and largely restricted to a few states and cities.
“We needed to sell our products in many more geographies because we probably are covering only about 30% of the addressable market. So for us driving distribution, and therefore driving brand building in new geographies is an important part of what we’re doing during the course of the summer," Vikram Grover, managing director, NourishCo Beverages Limited said.
In the first three quarters of the year, the company more than doubled its business, he said. NourishCo clocked ₹72 crore in revenue, the company said in a December quarter earnings presentation.
Over the last 15 months, the company set up a new distribution system for Himalayan, expanding distribution by 90%. Grover said having one parent company has also simplified decision-making and made processes quicker.
The company is piloting more products in the market. Earlier in the year the company piloted Tata Gluco+ in a jelly format. It expanded fruit-based beverage brand Tata Fruski, first launched in 2017, to new markets such as Odisha, Bihar, Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal after receiving a strong response in the brand’s pilot phase. It launched Tata Nature Alive, a mass-premium mineral water brand in select markets in the December quarter.
The company will soon launch Tata ORS+ in a plastic bottle.
Overall, within the portfolio, the company wants to have a larger play in the bottled water market across price points. “We also want to make Gluco+ relevant to many new target audiences, apart from tapping into some of the other functional spaces in the market where Tata ORS+ plays," Grover said, adding that the company has launched a slew of new products over the last 12 months.
“We believe that we’ve created distribution and manufacturing platform and we should leverage that with larger number of products," Grover said.
The company’s manufacturing locations have also increased though it works on an asset -light model and outsources beverage manufacturing to third-party contractors.
