The Hindu Business Line : GlaxoSmithKline relaunches three health drink brands

GLAXOSMITHKLINE Consumer Health Care has relaunched three of its health food drink brands while it has pulled out one of its ready-to-drink food drink from the market, which was undergoing test marketing.

Mr Shuabhit Sen, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Health Care general manager for nutritionals, told Business Line that the test marketing of its ready-to-drink brand, Horlicks Shake, did not give the required results. He said the results showed that it was not adding to the kind of scale the company expected from the product. "Hence we pulled out the product," Mr Sen said. The trials were conducted in Bangalore. The company will take a relook at launching the product later.

GlaxoSmithKline has also repositioned its health food brands such as Viva, Maltova and Boost over the last few months. "We have repositioned these brands and relaunched them with newer packaging," Mr Sen said. Viva and Maltova were bought from Jagatjit Industries in 2000. Viva has been repositioned as a traditional family health drink while Maltova has been repositioned as a tasty chocolate-based drink for children. Boost has also been repositioned as an energy drink.

In value terms, the health food drink market is around Rs 1, 400 crore and in volume terms around 65,000 tonnes per annum.

GlaxoSmithKline's share in the market is around Rs 1,000 crore from four brands, including Horlicks. Because of the repositioning, Boost's share in the market has grown to 14 per cent from around 12 per cent last year. Horlicks' share remains steady at around 54 per cent, including all its variants.

Mr Sen said the penetration level for health food drink was less than half of the population. Hence efforts were being made to tap the rural market. For example, the company was actively trying to market these brands in places with a population of around 5,000. "Our marketing effort is aimed at expanding the base. We are trying to see how many more buyers we can get," he said.

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