It’s epilogue for Reynolds as Rorito waltz in

For many of youngsters, their first pen was a ₹5 Reynolds ballpoint with a white body and blue cap. But those ubiquitous pens might be hard to find in India in the coming years.

Chennai-based GM Pens International Pvt Ltd, Indian licensee of the US-based pen maker Reynolds for over two decades, launched its new brand Rorito this year and ceased production of Reynolds last March.

Indrakumar Mahendran, Joint Managing Director, told Business Line , “It was a major business decision for us to go solo. With Reynolds we had export restrictions so we decided to enter the market with our own brand.”

Three months into the market and with a strong marketing and distribution network, the company has managed to retain its top position in the ₹3,500-crore Indian pen market with a market share of 17 per cent.

“In fact, Rorito exceeded last year’s Reynolds volume for the time period between February and May by 8 per cent,” Mahendran said.

GM pens International manufactures 25 lakh pens daily and is growing at the rate of 8 per cent as opposed to the industry growth of 5 per cent. There are 13 manufacturing units in Chennai and Puducherry with total capacity of 30 lakh pens daily. A new facility at the investment of ₹30 crore planned at Puducherry will increase the total capacity to 38 lakh.

Last year, the company clocked revenue of ₹440 crore and expects to end this year with ₹500 crore. Around ₹40 crore went into infrastructure changes for the new brand and ₹35 crore for marketing and brand building exercises. Schneider (Germany) is the technology partner for product design and development. Dokumental (Germany) and Mikuni (Japan) are partners for ink technology.

“We want to strengthen our domestic market so we are building capacity. We will focus on export to West Asian and African countries initially in another 18 months,” Mahendran added.

Diversification into stationery and office products such as notepads, basic calculators and file folders are also in the pipeline. Around 31 Writesite, now Writesite Rorito, outlets sell the company’s stationery products. Of the 31, two are franchisee and the rest owned by the company.

“We are planning to increase the outlets to 50 through standalone and shop-in-shop formats,” Mahendran said.

While pens within price range ₹5-10 are major revenue generators (almost 70 per cent of the company’s revenue comes from this segment), Mahendran said they intend to enter premium pen segment priced at ₹2,000-₹4,000 in a year’s time.

The road ahead is not without hurdles as establishing the brand is in itself a challenge. “Identity of Reynolds as a household brand will not change overnight,” Mahendran said.

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