YOGI: the new flavoured yoghurt from Amul

Amul, the country’s biggest food retail brand is launching a fruit flavoured yoghurt to be called Yogi, reports Business Standard. The product to be targetted at the youth and health consciousin will be made available in three flavours: strawberry, mango and pineapple, in early 2007.

GCCMF, the Rs. 3,774 crore food behemoth, which owns Amul brand, is also looking at introducing a range of sugar free chocolates and ice-creams. Amul’s emphasis on diet products is borne out from the research, according to which, youth below 25 years of age who constitute majority of its customers are looking at healthier alternatives to carbonated soft drinks.

As reported earlier, Amul had recently introduced Kool Cafe, a ready to drink coffee. Amul, over the last few years, has also been regularly introducing a range of milk-based products such as Kool flavoured milk, Masti buttermilk and Dahi and Stamina energy drink.

The Rs. 900 crore non carbonated beverages segment is going to be among the fastest growing segments in the next few years.While Amul as a whole has grown at about 16% last year, the new non carbonated beverage brands and milk products are expected to clock a growth of 20-25% in the next few years.

Amul, which with 37% market share is the biggest ice cream brand in the country, is also looking at garnering the upper end of the mass market with relatively higher end products such as sundaes and sugar free ice creams.

In a deviation from its strategy, Amul will look at entering product categories where it would be able to provide a substantial value addition and will also be able to make it difficult for others to introduce ‘me-too’ products.

44,000 hactare of vacant Railway land to benefit farmers, consumers

Reliance Retail, Pantaloon, RPG and Sunil Mittal owned Bharati, which recently signed a partnership agreement with the world’s biggest retailer Walmart, are some of the top business houses that are vying to exploit the 44,000 hectares of surplus Railway land for retail, reports PTI. This land under the control of the Rail Ministry is lying vacant across the country.

According to Ministry sources, the said initiatives from corporate houses, have come after the Railway Minister Lalu Prasad’s announcement that the surplus land would be made available for commercial purposes under Public-Private-Partnership. As reported earlier, retail business could benefit immensely by exploiting the assets owned by the Railways including using the vacant land for building budget hotels, cold storage, warehouses and farm outlets.

Railway Ministry is desirous to set up over 7,500 farm outlets at Railway Stations across the country, which will benefit farmers as they would be able to sell their products close to their fields. Railway’s vacant land could also be exploited for growing a wide range of food products, particularly horticulture products.

All of the multi brand retail majors like Reliance, RPG, ITC and Bharati have plans to provide farm fresh products to consumers at affordable prices as well as to offer better prices to farmers by eliminating the role of intermediaries and reducing wastage of parishables by setting up efficient collection centres and cold chain. Railways could become a major catalyst in achieving these objectives.

While Reliance Retail Ltd has an ambitious plans to provide fresh food and vegetables in its outlets, Railway’s surplus land could provide an opportunity to grow a wide variety of food products.

Hakoba plans five fold retail expansion; to open 250 stores

Garment retailing is an opportunity every one wants to capitalise on and Hakoba- the Rs. 22 crore, number one, mid-priced womenwear embroidered textile apparel brand, is no exception. Hakoba Lifestyles, which is owned by the country’s biggest embroidered garment, lace and accessories manufacturer Pioneer Embroideries Ltd., has decided to aggresively expand its retail presence by increasing retail stores five fold from 50 at present to 250 at an investment of Rs. 100 crore in the next 3 years. 65 of these stores will be operational in the next three months. During this period, the company will also expand its presence in multi brand outlets from 200 to 800.

Hakoba retail expansion will mostly be through franchisee route as 70% of the retail stores will be franchisee owned while the balance 30% will be company owned. The expansion should result in more than seven fold increase in sales in the next three years.

Over the next one year, Hakoba which boasts of rich a library of 40,000 designs, is looking at brand extensions in the menswear, home textiles and lingerie segments. To increase revenues from its apparel business, Hakoba recently entered premium womenwear segment with a new range of high priced sarees, dress material, etc. Hakoba has planned to sell its new range to be called Hakoba Premium or Hakoba Club only through its exclusive showrooms.

Hakoba is also planning to set up retail stores in the US, the UK and west Asian countries.