The Hindu Business Line : Pidilite appoints O&M to handle Chikkers brand

MAKING a foray into the food segment, the Rs 750-crore Pidilite Industries has appointed O&M as the creative agency to handle its Chikkers brand of chikkis, a jaggery and peanut toffee. The media duties for its new brand have been assigned to Maxxus.

Pidilite had put its Ranipal brand of fabric whitener under this division and has now included its foods brand Chikkers to mark a more aggressive foray into the FMCG segment. (Pidilite has floated a separate FMCG division in the past.)

Chikkers is being positioned as a health snack. The brand is available in three flavours - Peanut Punch, Coconut Crunch and Sesame Surprise.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Sanjay Panigrahi, Chief Sales & Marketing, said, "This is our first foray into the foods category and the focus would be on ethnic snacks as we launch more food products. Snacks are a growing category and in the chikkis segment, we would be competing with mainly unorganised brands."

However, Pidilite is yet to develop a strong distribution for its food-based FMCG brands.

Its Chikkis brand is presently confined to markets of Mumbai and Punjab and the company is in the process of rolling out a nationwide distribution. Pidilite is enhancing its network to reach out to 750 distributors across 3 lakh retailers in the country.

Presently, it has a network of 1,200 distributors to handle its Fevicol franchise.

The company is in the process developing a new network to reach out to retailers across on the country.

"We are expecting to clock a turnover of Rs 5 crore in the first year with our Chikkis brand," said Mr Panigrahi. While it is outsourcing the Chikkis brand through third party vendors (Sankalp Foods), the company might also considering manufacturing the food products depending on how the brand fares in the market.

There is also a possibility of Pidilite launching retail stores to mark its FMCG foray in the foods segment. "May be over a period of time, we may have outlets and it again depends on how the brand fares in the market," added Mr Panigrahi.

In fact, Pidilite has already made its first retail foray under the `Hobby Ideas' brand, which retails its art material brands.

"As a starter, we might also stock the Chikkers brand at the existing retail store," said Mr Panigrahi.