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Amrutanjan Health Care Ltd, a 117-year-old company known for its eponymous pain management products in the OTC (over the counter) pharma space, is planning to diversify into energy and health drinks and ready-to-eat food segments, said Mr S. Sambhu Prasad, CEO and Managing Director of the company.
Fruitnik buy
As a first step in this direction, the company last week acquired a beverages company Siva's Soft Drink Pvt Ltd, for a consideration of Rs 26 crore. Siva's is the owner of the fruit-based soft drink brand Fruitnik and carbonated soft drink brand Rejoice with a turnover of Rs 16 crore. “Our intention is to use the Fruitnik brand as a platform to launch our energy and health drinks that are in the development stage with us,” he said.
Besides, Amrutanjan is planning to launch a range of ready-to-eat agro foods including sambar rice, carrot halwa and dhal , packed in retort pouches under the brand ‘Kitchen Delights' for the domestic and export markets. According to Mr Prasad, these products are to be sourced from Chandirarh-based Punjab Agro Industries.
Youth appeal
Rubbishing the market talk that Amrutanjan is an ‘acquisition target', he said, “In fact, we are in the process of re-launching our mother brand Amrutanjan with new brand positioning, to appeal to youth, in the next couple of months.” He said the idea is to consolidate its flagship product category – pain management – to compete with multinational brands such as GSK (Iodex), P&G (Vicks) and Reckitt Benckiser (Moov), more vigorously.
Amrutanjan is present in the pain management, cough and cold, health and home care categories with 13 products and over 40 SKUs (stock keeping units). The company is also expected expand its product portfolio by getting into complementary products such as sanitary napkins in the women's hygiene products category and handwash liquid in the home care segment.
Big presence
It is currently the second largest player (in terms of number of units sold) in the rubs and balms category after Emami; and “we are neck-to-neck with Move for the third place after Vicks and Zandu – in terms of volume and value,” Mr Prasad said, quoting AC Nielsen.
On the exports front, it has registered the brand Amrutanjan in 13 countries to facilitate export. Besides, the company is also reformulating some of its products to export to the US market, so as to comply with the loal regulatory code.
Amrutanjan last year posted a turnover of Rs 89 crore and “we are well on track to surpass the Rs 100-crore mark this year,” Mr Prasad said.
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