Ag Talk | We tapped the untapped market, Paper Boat's Kakkar

Paper Boat a fast growing brand of Indian ethnic drinks from Hector Beverages has introduced a niche category of drinks to the Indian market. Rather it is not niche, it is traditional, it has always been there, just that not so easily available to everyone.

The company is led by seasoned beverage industry professionals and have offered consumers a brand which is creative, innovative and quirky and offers a classic Indian flavour that transports the consumers back in time.

This beverage brand has gone beyond the usual cola and syrups to come up with something new. Very recently, they came up with a campaign in which they wanted their audience to go ride down the river of memories Ad Film. Their first campaign, a touching three and a half minute digital ad and snippets of 30 seconds which were launched on television has been creating the buzz they had to.

Very recently, we at Adgully caught up with Neeraj Kakkar, Co-Founder and CEO of Hector Beverages to know more about their strategy ahead.

Adgully (AG): Can you share some milestones?

Neeraj Kakkar (NK): We first test marketed Paper Boat in Feb 2013 and we nationally launched Paper Boat in August 2013. There were two flavours then and we have been expanding variants ever since we began. In 2014 we launched 7-8 variants more and now we have about 10 variants.

AG: How have you evolved since the time you started and what are your strategies ahead?

NK: The journey has been very exciting. We’re blessed to have been in a place where we are. The brand is loved, it is appreciated all across. We hit upon some hits and means of these traditional beverages which nobody was catering to and we’re fortunate to be in this place.

Paper Boat as a brand has two faces. One is the drinks side, which is the traditional drinks side and we call it Paper Boat drinks side, and the second is Paper Boat Memories side which is a brand. And brand is all about memories, innocent memories.

For us, we want to take Paper Boat Drinks to more geography and we want to take Paper Boat Memories and those stories to more number of people, and tell those stories to more audiences. And that is happening simultaneously.

AG: What variants do you offer?

NK: All the variants are without any preservatives, colour and carbonation. Currently, Paper Boat offers nine variants: Aamras, Jaljeera, Jamun Kalakhatta, Aam Panna, Kokum, Golgappe Ka Paani, Chilled Rasam and Ice Tea in two flavours: Tulsi & Ginger Lemon, across six leading metros.

AG: Was it difficult for you to work on the packaging, pricing and the distribution front? How did you go about the same?

NK:  Difficult is a difficult term to describe. No, I would say it was not. We completely enjoyed building different aspects of the business.

AG: What is the industry size?

NK: The packaged beverage industry is close to Rs. 30,000 crore in India. We have two dominant large players in the country, while others are small regional players.

AG: Do you think you have created a niche?

NK: We strongly believe that we have created a niche and there is no direct competition and it’s a way of living. We are serving a need because we need to be different. It is beverage but we want to share some sort of story along with it. However, I think it’s easy to say that it’s different from a normal carbonated drink. Our flavours Aam Panna, or Jal Jeera serve a different taste, refresh people and at the same time have a different psychology all together.

AG: How has your experience helped Paper Boat grow so far?

NK: Both my previous organizations Coke and Wipro have been great organizations. Wipro’s Value system is very strong, so whatever is the value system with us has been from what we learnt in Wipro, in terms of frugality, in terms of integrity. So that was the basic ground of building a new professional. On the other hand Coke as a company is a great place to work. What I learnt from Coke is one; take care of the quality of your product top most. Do whatever it takes, but make sure that the quality of your products is the best and that’s something that we put in practice every single day in our organization. And the second part that I learnt from Coke is that, take care of your brand and brand equity to the religious level. So that is something that we try to maintain.

AG: Is this your first campaign?

NK: Yes, this is the first time we are advertising Paper Boat on Mass Media now.

AG: Would have more campaigns in the year to come?

NK: Yes, there would be more campaigns as we go along. We just started off with summer and we’re extremely excited about it. This campaign is special because Gulzar sahib agreed to do this campaign and I think he very well fits with the brand. This campaign is special to us because we are fans of the ‘Malgudi Days’ and in some ways it is our ode to the experience of our times. The core of Paper Boat is innocence, and innocence runs in the work of Gulzar sahib, innocence runs through in the music of Malgudi Days and I think that is the common thread which ties everything together.

AG: What kind of media mix did you use for the campaign?

NK: This campaign is more electronic and digital. We are not doing Print or Outdoor at all. We are widely spread on TV, across channels. For digital, there is a lot of activity happening on Facebook and YouTube.

AG: What are your expansion plans?

NK: We are there only in the top 6 towns right now and we don’t have distribution to rest of the places. One our goal is to get to 50 towns and reach more number of people.

AG: Do you plan to go to Tier II & III towns as well?

NK: We do intend to go top 50 towns in the country. We’re still on the planning stage on that front.

AG: What are the strategies in the way forward for the brand?

NK: So that is very far at the core, the brand core is very strong. We are saying innocence by taking innocent memories out of this. So I think that part is extremely strong and the products that we launched with the same integrity, we tried to be as natural as possible, we tried to create recipes which have been traditional and which have been there for hundreds of years and we did not want to mess around with those recipes. I think the strategy for the brand is to go about and tell the story to more people. The story is there, it is very strong and it’s just about going and telling it to more and more people.

AG: What do you visualize for 2015?

NK: This year can probably take us to the next big leap and we are seeing a lot of traction. People are talking about us and as we go and tell the story to more number of people, I think we will be able to get a higher share of throat as they say.

This year we are going to more cities, we are going with more number of variants. It’s a pretty exciting and high growth time for us. By Archit Ambekar | Twitter: @aambarchit