Plans expansion into Southern markets with premium offerings
Tata Consumer Products Ltd. (TCPL) aims to be a serious player in the coffee business in India by reaching out to more customers in the South and non-southern markets. The company is also focusing on introducing more premium coffee brands to grow its market share, said Puneet Das, president, Packaged Beverages (India & South Asia).
Currently, the market is dominated by Nestle’s Nescafe and Hindustan Unilever’s Bru brands and Tata has a share of less than 2%.
The company, which introduced Tata Coffee Grand in the instant category for the first time in 2015, has chalked out a strategy to grow the business significantly in the coming years, according to Mr. Das.
“We have doubled our focus, particularly in the last two years. Recently we have had a series of launches,” said Mr. Das. “We also got into the D2C [Direct to Consumer] space. We are really expanding the Tata Coffee portfolio. We recently launched Sonnets by Tata Coffee, which is a premium range in D2C,” he added.
Mr. Das said the company had introduced Tata Coffee Gold, a premium offering. “Today, the coffee category is premiumising a lot and consumers are willing to experiment a lot, especially in the South. That’s where our foray is,” he added.
“For us, there is a lot of headroom for growth. We want to be a serious coffee player and we should become a sizeable player as we move up,” he added.
“Our coffee business has grown 45% in volume on a small base (FY22 vs FY12). It continues to grow well y-o-y leveraging on TCPL’s network and distribution reach,” he said. “Currently about one-tenth the size of tea market, the coffee segment is fast-growing and more in the premium end in the instant coffee space,” he said. “Outside South we are seeing sales coming from the metros in the premium end. We’re also coming up with innovations. We had launched Tata Coffee Quick Filter, which is a first-of-its-kind instant coffee powder that gives you the taste of a filter coffee and we found good acceptance. We are scaling it up across modern trade, e-commerce and select markets,” he added.
