We’ve not come out of the woods totally: Tata Consumer Products executive Puneet Das

Faced with slowing demand for beverages, Tata Consumer Products Ltd (TCPL), is doing a price correction on one hand and on the other it is also tapping into the market for premium products with an eye out also for health and wellness variants. In conversation with DH’s Lavpreet Kaur, TCPL’s president for packaged beverages (India and South Asia), Puneet Das, sketched the tightrope his company is walking to scale up its business in the segment. Excerpts from that interaction:

Post-pandemic, what are the demand and supply trends in the retail space?

In retail, demand during Covid had gone more consistently to online purchases and that continues. Consumers became more open to experimentation and a lot of it continues. Health and wellness have become a key priority and people are seeking it, especially when it comes to food and beverage (F&B) choices. That, sort of, is what we had also picked up, our innovation, especially in beverages is focused on wellness and convenience and health and wellness.

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Rural demand is suppressed.

What steps are you taking to boost rural consumption?

In the past, we had taken some price corrections. We have been focussing a lot on Rs 10 pack, 100-gram pack size and on reaching more outlets to reach more households. So I think accessibility has been one of the big drivers. On the other hand, we have been premiumising our mix. We have seen our brands like Tata Tea Gold Care increase in terms of contribution to business also.

What products in Tata's portfolio have seen the highest growth post-pandemic? And which have declined? What contributed to these trends?

We operate in a food and beverage space and we are in a daily basket, be it tea, coffee, salt, or pulses. Overall we are seeing a rise in packaged food across India. The reason for this is that people are moving from unbranded to branded and the same for food also.

To what extent is inflation affecting consumption in the retail industry?

We saw some temporary headwinds in the past quarters, in terms of downgrading of brands (and package sizes), because the homemaker has a budget to manage and that budget sort of was getting stretched.

What’s cooking at TCP?

We're just in the middle of launching and scaling up Tata Tea Premium ‘Street Chai of India’. We started the journey of hyperlocal marketing with Tata Tea premium about three years back where we were curating a marketing mix, which was very region-specific. Hyderabadi Irani Chai, Kolkata Street Chai, Mumbai Cutting Chai, Puraani Delhi ki Mithaai Chai- these are four variants that are now available under this streetside collection and that's the latest launch. We are getting very good responses in ecommerce and we are scaling it up across markets.

What are the top challenges in the coming fiscal year and how do you plan to tackle them?

In terms of inflation, we're just coming out of the woods, we've not come out of the woods totally. So, that's the biggest challenge from an FMCG point of view. We are improving the accessibility of our value packs - that is a big strategy. We've taken about a year and a half to consolidate our brands into Agni architecture, which is a mass-economy brand. We are building equity into it so that aspiration value is there as and when we become more accessible.