Brands
Reliance eyes sports drinks disruption with Rs 10 Spinner
MUMBAI: It’s looking at pumping up a rather placid Indian sports hydration drink market which has not seen much innovation from major players who have gotten used to selling bottled refreshments at high sticker prices.
Reliance Consumer Products is, like in the past, using price and packaging as points to gain consumers’ attention and possibly upset the existing economics that multinationals have put in place for their production pipelines over the decades that they have been present in India and serving sports hydration drinks.
Spinner the Reliance offering is priced at Rs 10 for 150 ml, making it much more affordable than established players like Pepsico’s Gatorade and Coca-Cola’s Powerade which retail at Rs 50 and above for 500 ml. Decathlon’s sports drink Aptonia costs Rs 99 for a 400 ml bottle, though it is available at Rs 69 on the portal.
Co-created with cricket legend Muttiah Muralitharan, Spinner is be available in lemon, orange and nitro blue flavours. The company aims to create a Rs 83,000 crore (US$1 billion) sports beverage category in India within three years.
The launch follows Reliance’s successful disruption of the sparkling beverages market with Campa, which gained 10 per cent market share in some states within two years. The company has partnered with five IPL teams including Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Titans to boost brand visibility.
“We’ve created an affordable hydration solution for everyone,” said Ketan Mody, chief operating officer at Reliance Consumer. The launch comes after the company’s recent entry into energy drinks with RasKik Gluco Energy, also priced at Rs 10.
600 ml of Spinner -four packs of 150 ml each – will cost Rs 40, which is a substantial hair cut over the long-in-existence price point that the big two have been commanding in the market. A price war is imminent with packaging variants and pricing options being forced upon Powerade and Gatorade.
Should the consumer celebrate?
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
