Gits will launch 4-5 new products every year: Sahil Gilani

Established in 1963, Gits Food Products has been a closely held private enterprise that's known in India and globally for quality instant food mixes, ready-to-cook (RTC) and ready-to-eat (RTE) products. The company promoters have also extended brand Gits to dairy products namely ghee (made from cow milk) and packaged milk variants (sold in Pune market only for now) that were added to the portfolio a little over a year ago. Sahil Gilani, director – sales and marketing, Gits Food Products Pvt Ltd, in conversation with Ashish K Tiwari, speaks about the company's business and more. Edited excerpts...

Could you give us an overview of this market and where does your company stand?

The instant mix and ready-to-eat industry is a Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,200 crore market in India of which mixes alone is about Rs 700 to Rs 800 crore – dessert mixes is around Rs 500 crore and ready-to-cook breakfast mixes is about Rs 300 crore. The snack mixes is at a few hundred crore and finally ready-to-eat at about Rs 30 crore odd. There is no real data on exports available so I wouldn't be able to give any numbers. In terms of growth, while RTE hasn't grown as expected because there are perceptional issues, the overall industry also didn't grow as well last year owing to demonetization effect and related uncertainties in the market. However, in previous years the category has grown well and this year too there are healthy signs.

The RTC mixes category is mainly dominated by two players, which includes Gits at a leadership position in most states and various smaller local players. There are other large multinational and Indian conglomerates in the market as well but their share is small and they are not focusing much on it because it's too small a category for them. Though Gits is a national player the western region is our strongest market. We started focusing early in the day to get volumes through exports to UK, UAE, Australia and US. Today we export to 40 countries. In fact, any Indian store anywhere in the world will definitely have Gits products. Over the past decade we have also entered mainstream international stores such as Whole Foods, Walmart, etc in certain countries. Currently, domestic market contributes around 65% to our overall revenues and the balance is from exports.

Gits as a brand has been in the market for over half a century now, how do you stay relevant to the millennials?

Brands are reaching out to the younger audience and that's something our almost 55-year company is doing as well by keeping social and digital media as an integral part of our marketing mix. We recently did a digital #ThankYouBhaiya campaign that was aimed at reaching out to the younger target audience. The video revolved around the guardian theme. A single women/ girl living in a city all by herself would primarily consider her watchman, liftman, auto/taxi driver, etc as her guardian.

We used Raksha-Bandhan as an occasion in the promotional video and showed how the women/girl gratifies these people (guardians) using our products (mixes) to make gulab jamuns at home and gift it to them. The fact that a person has taken efforts to make something on her own and gift it makes for a huge emotional connect for the brand with the target audience. The #ThankYouBhaiya digital campaign (one minute video with just 3-4 seconds of Gits branding) gave out a larger message and went viral across all social media platforms garnering over 35 lakh views in five days.

We also added canned gulab jamun and rasgulla (ready-to-eat) to the portfolio recently. These are targeted at consumers who have grown up with the taste of sweets made from Gits mixes and want to enjoy the same without the hassles of making it at home. In addition, we also launched a wholesome breakfast range which use superfoods like flax seeds, oats, brown rice etc. popular breakfast dishes like idili, dosa and dhokla. So besides, efforts to be relevant we are also continuously working on building customer stickiness so that the brand stays in the minds of every generation.

How has the market reacted to these initiatives?

The food mixes have always been the bread and butter for the company and they continue to do exceptionally well in the domestic and international markets. As for ready-to-eat canned desserts/ sweets that we introduced in the market a quarter ago, we are doing great volumes and I am unable to cater to the market demand at present. I wasn't really anticipating such an overwhelming response from the market. The products have picked up very well. We have been a convenience food brand and our focus has been on offering the most convenient possible option to our consumers. Those who enjoy cooking can buy the mixes and those who don't want to cook can choose from various ready-to-eat and canned food products. In fact, we have started getting inquiries for 15-kilogram packs (canned desserts) from sweet/ mithai retail stores who want to sell it on their own and that itself speaks about the market's perception about our new introductions.

What's your approach to pricing considering the brand's focus on quality?

We are priced competitively and it's pretty much at the same levels as competition. There is a lot of competition (organised and unorganised) in this sector and there are even national players that adopt the 'buy one get one' free approach to attract customers. That's not our play and being a quality player we don’t resort to such heavy discounting. Our strategy is to continue building a long term sustainable brand on benchmark quality and food safety- no Gits products have any preservatives.

Being a family business we are privately held and spend our budgets with a long term perspective. What we earn is ploughed-back into the business operations. We are clear that we'll not over leverage ourselves to take on losses for small term gains but are willing to take a hit on earnings, if need be, to sustain our quality promise. The sad part is a lot of players have reduced milk powder content while increasing maida and cheaper raw material content in their dessert mixes thus compromising on the quality while offering a one plus one scheme. Our composition of ingredients has been the same since inception thus assuring consistent quality for over five decades now.

How many new products have you introduced in the market in the recent past?

We currently have close to 80 different stock keeping units (SKUs) in our portfolio. Being conservative, we haven't made many new product introductions in the last three years. It was a deliberate attempt because we have a very large product portfolio and the objective is to make every product sustainable in the entire basket of offerings. So we relaunched some products in the past three years and this year we are back on the innovation game as 10 new products have been launched in the past six months so far. A complete range of wholesome breakfast (with more nutrition and superfoods) products have been introduced. Canned gulab jamuns and rasgullas were introduced a few months ago as were beverage falooda mixes and badam drink. Our existing portfolio also consists of a unique range of organic RTE foods (made using organic ingredients) that's largely for exports. We are hoping to bring some new product innovations into this category to be able to make it grow better. Going forward, we will be targeting 4-5 new launches every year that's apart from the relaunches that keep happening on an ongoing basis.

What is your go-to-market strategy and marketing spend like?

We do a mix of above the line (ATL), below the line (BTL) and digital/social media marketing. BTL is our backbone. As our product quality speaks for itself wet sampling and live demos give us great sales for both RTC and RTE. However, my marketing spends when it comes to ATL is focussed on RTC mixes and mainly around the festive season with nearly half our annual budget being spent between August to October wherein TV (Hindi general entertainment channels GECs, regional, news channels) is our prime media outlay. Our digital spends have nearly tripled year-on-year and we use our social media following of over three lakh people effectively and regularly all year round.

For our ready meals portfolio, it doesn't make any return on investment (RoI) sense to advertise on TV. Also, in this segment there is this new phenomenon emerging -- online. We have our own e-commerce portal www.gitsfood.com and we also sell on Amazon and several other portals. There, RTE does better than mixes and nowhere else will you find this buying behaviour. This means we have to reach the customer at the right point so we focus a lot online for our ready meals. The traction for ready meals, in my view, is largely coming from bachelors, families who don't want to cook, students and businessmen going/ travelling overseas especially destinations where Indian/ vegetarian (no onion/garlic) food is not easy to find.