Pepsi to launch Slice in cartons

P.T.Jyothi Datta

Richa Mishra

NEW DELHI, Nov. 21

COCA-COLA India's Maaza and Parle Agro's Frooti, have more competition coming. The latest combatant on the mango-drinks in cartons block comes from the Pepsi group.

Pepsico India Holdings is poised to launch Slice in a `new, snazzy, slim-line' carton.

The newly packaged Slice is slated for launch in Chennai in the next couple of days, following which it will be launched in other cities in the South. It would subsequently be launched in the northern region, a Pepsi spokesperson told Business Line.

The foray into flexible packaging literally takes the battle into the competition's backyard. Early last year, Maaza had also introduced its cartons to take on Frooti.The product is being packaged at Dynamix Diary at Baramati in Maharashtra, where Pepsico's 100 per cent fruit juice Tropicana is also manufactured and packaged.

On whether the new slim-line packs would take a slice out of its sibling, Tropicana's market share, the company's official said that Slice was a 15 per cent juice drink positioned at the mass-end of the spectrum, as against the 100 per cent fruit juice Tropicana, which was at the top-end.

The new streamline packs, priced at Rs 10, will be in the marketplace in addition to the existing 250-ml returnable glass bottles. Slice had recently made industry-watchers sit-up with its `Daba ke Piyo' advertisement, featuring model, Sheetal Malhar. Recently, Maaza had gone in for an innovation by``fortifying''the drink with calcium, before launching more flavours.

An advertising blitz, to support the launch of the new packs, was not on the immediate agenda, the company official said. He said that in Chennai and other cities where it would be launched in the first phase, the slim-lines would be supported with outdoor and point-of-sale merchandise. "More flavours for Slice are also being looked at in due course."

The new Slice packages are being introduced in Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Goa, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baroda and Rajkot, in the first phase. The launch follows research done by the company with the objective of taking a fresh look at the mango drinks category and the psyche of the mango drinker. Following the research, done with 22 focus groups, the positioning of Slice was evolved as the ``ultimate mango delight''.