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Two of the six co-founders of India’s first e-commerce company Fabmart.com and first online-to-offline retail company Fabmall, have teamed up to launch another first in the organised beverage market with the launch of Again Drinks.
A ‘Made in India’ product right from its formulation to the process, Again Drinks is positioned as a healthy and tasty beverage brand that promises to be wholesome as it uses real ingredients from the five major food groups as defined by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), namely dairy, fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains.
Going natural
The beverage does not have any refined sugar, added preservatives, artificial colours or flavours, does not require refrigeration and has a shelf life of 90 days.
“Again Drinks are wholesome, tasty and filling. There are beverages that have dairy or fruits or vegetables, there are drinks that have no sugar, no preservatives, there are beverages that are ambient and don’t need refrigeration but, there is not a single product in the market that offers all of it in one product,” said serial entrepreneur and best-selling author K Vaitheeswaran, who co-founded Again Drinks with Sundeep Thakran, 20 years after they started Fabmart (later branded Indiaplaza.com) that failed and shut down in 2013.
Priced at ₹50 for a 200-ml bottle, the four variants — two of which are based on low fat milk and two which are based on low fat yoghurt — will be sold at an introductory offer of ₹39, in Bengaluru to begin with.
Beverage market
Of the total beverages market in India that was ₹43,034 crore in 2015 and is estimated to grow to ₹1,36,000 crore by 2023, the company’s addressable market is ₹15,000 crore, of which it is targeting just 3 per cent which amounts to a ₹500-crore FMCG market. After Bengaluru, the company will expand to Chennai followed by other cities in the South and then go pan India.
“We will launch many more variants soon, hope to sell half a million bottles in the next one year and will require to invest ₹50-100 crore over the next five years to build a reasonable business,” said Vaitheeswaran.
The products are made in existing manufacturing facilities in Bengaluru and Tamil Nadu. The company has filed two provisional patents for its process and formulation.
The products are currently available at 40-50 outlets in Bengaluru including Namdharis, Nature’s Basket, in select stores of Tata Star and also on BigBasket.
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