9146804306Ice cream!!

Water start running in everybody mouth as the name appear,

and it's not like that only kids or young have interest even ice cream is well capable of
bringing water in mouth of old once also, here age no bar .Ice cream can be very helpful
in making someone mood or he/she may be upset by some reason, offer ice cream to
him/her; suddenly there will be change in mood and a smile will appear.
It is not like that keep on heating ice cream is good for your health, it can cause harm to
your teeth because now a day ice cream are coming with many compositions of
different type of material and chemical mix with your ice cream. Ice creams are
categorized in two ways - one is natural ice cream and other is conventional ice cream.
Conventional ice cream contains added flavors which are made of chemicals like
Diethyl glycol, Aldehydec-17, Amyl acetate, Butyraldehyde, Benzyl Acetate and other
chemicals to give a particular flavor.

These chemicals are highly toxic in nature and can harm body system, can change the
malfunctioning of body and are a major reason or symptom behind rheumatoid arthritis.
These chemicals are found to be major reason behind rheumatoid arthritis symptoms
found in the patients. In one word, rheumatoid arthritis should avoid ice cream from their
diet.

Natural ice cream is made up of milk and natural pulp of fruits like strawberry, cherry,
mango, banana, grapes, various fruit juice and other organic ingredients. So far natural
ice cream looks good.

So before going for an ice cream, you should think over because your health come first
then any taste or flavor. So choose better brand because they make Ice-ream that are









fffgood source of vitamin A, thiamine, niacin and vitamin E. They think for your health
and your family together with delicious taste.

Natural Ice Cream

The ice cream parlour which began as a small initiative in 1984 stands in 2006 as an
entity with profitability as high as Rs 1.4 crore and with determination to double it in the
subsequent financial year. Mr. R. S. Kamath is the brainchild of one of Mumbai's best
known ice cream brands the Natural Ice cream. Since its inception the company has
managed to build its equity purely through word-of-mouth.

Natural ice cream has gained the reputation as being the most sought after ice cream
parlours in Mumbai especially among the young people. It enjoys a very substantial
footfall at its outlets, making thus evident the facility and service orientation applied to it.
Natural ice cream as a company has been registering a consistent growth over the
years. R. V. Mallya, General Manager, attributes this growth partially to the changing
lifestyles, eating habits and the increasing per capita income and significantly to the
quality of the products offered by the company thus enabling customers to be retained
and also augmented through a good word-of-mouth.

However, although the company has a strong position it does face challenges. One in
terms of continually innovating and introducing new products coupled with consistency
and the other through competition from not only local players but also foreign players
like Gelato, Amore etc

The questions before Management was Should Natural increase its advertising to reach
out to a larger segment of the masses? Should it expand beyond the precincts of
Maharashtra and Gujarat to enhance its market share?

arly history and Strategy

This success story began with two unfortunate incidents; one was Kamath's failure in
the seventh grade, because of which his father stopped his education and brought him
to Mumbai and the second was his split with his brother and their business venture in
Mumbai Gokul, a chain of restaurants serving ice creams, fast food and juices.

The split with his brother was in 1984 and he realized that if he had to prove himself he
had to initiate a very novel idea and enterprise on it. What dawned on him was to
introduce a business venture in which he had domain expertise as well as one which
would be unique, and hence he decided upon making ice creams the traditional way
and keeping it completely natural, devoid of artificial flavours and preservatives.

At that moment the market was dominated by industrial players, like Vadilal and Kwality
and it had a loyal crowd of customers. Moving away from the artificial was his unique
selling proposition. After the initial introduction of traditional ice creams he added a
small treat to it, by deciding to add bits of fresh fruits to the ice creams.

Kamath had gained a lot of proficiency while with his brother, but the idea of fruits came
from the fact that his father was a dealer in fresh seasonal fruits, from whom he learnt
the nuances of fruit trade.

And hence the brand Natural was born
.
About Natural Ice cream

In 1984 with an initial investment of just Rs 3 lacs, Kamath opened his first outlet in
Juhu. This was the first business venture he embarked on all by himself, and he wanted
to run it very cautiously. He then had only 3 as staff members and his wife assisting him
then. He did not initially spend on the outlet ambience and instead let his products spea
for itself. This also worked as an advantage to him as he was not under pressure to
earn high returns immediately.

So armed with the basic skill of making ice cream the traditional Indian way, he started
his business. It struck him that whenever Indians wanted to embellish a seasonal fruit,
they often poured milk on it. He thought of doing the reverse, by embellishing his
traditional ice cream with fruit. Hence he added slivers of whichever fruit the customer
asked for. Since he knew about fruits, it was easier for him to choose the best ones.

A few months after the outlet opened he introduced 15 new fruit flavours, of which
Sitafal was an instant hit. He recalls having sold 300 scoops or 12 kgs of ice cream on
the very first Sunday of February 1984.

Once the idea of combining traditional ice creams with fruits proved successful, he
decided not to settle on anything except the best seasonal fruits and hence traveled
across the state to procure them. He travellled to Saswad, a small town near Pune for
sitafals and to Ratnagiri for mangoes. Soon he was able to give a wide choice to his
consumers.

Although he had instant success through his specialized products, he priced them at a
reasonable amount and much lower than the other established brands. He continually
sought to learn from the customer and incorporated their suggestions effectively to profit
from it. In an instance, a customer informed him of how other businesses were getting
innovative with fruits and ice creams in places like Africa and Singapore. These
suggestions were seriously acted upon and improvements were accordingly made. He
is even said to have introduced the jamun flavour on the feedback of a customer.

After having started with a single outlet of 300 sq. ft. in Mumbai, it has grown to possess
46 such outlets in Mumbai, 4 in Pune and one each in Nasik and Ahmedabad. All the
outlets get their ice cream from a factory in Charkop, Mumbai. The ice cream is
dispatched in batches to ensure that only fresh produce is stocked at the outlets. As the
process uses no preservatives and fresh fruits are added, the ice cream must be sold
and consumed within a short time period since its manufacturing. It however does not
have a distributor network in place and even to places like Pune, Nasik and Ahmedabad
it delivers through its ice cream factory at Charkop.

In 2006 it was voted as one of the Top ice creams at the 2nd Consumer Reaction
Award conducted by Bharati Vidyapeeth Institute of Management Studies and Research
& DNA.

The philosophy of Naturals is to find the purest and the finest ingredients and craft them
into ice cream. It is a way of doing business that is as much demanding as it is
uncommon. This is the reason why Natural ice cream epitomizes as the finest ice
creams of India.

Challenges faced

The journey to a strong market holding was not a smooth sailing one. The process of
producing traditional Indian ice cream was not only slow but also laborious and had to
be done manually, which meant maintaining the consistency in taste was a huge
challenge. It also had to be made in batches to ensure that it is fresh. To resolve this
issue Kamath began seeking equipments which would not only make the traditional ice
cream but also enhance productivity and ensure quality. Hence he approached a Dairy
technologist who educated him on efficiency, bacterial quality, hygiene and consistency.
Gradually he custom-made, developed and adopted equipments like mechanical
churners to improve efficiency. He also faced other challenges like de-seeding sitafal.
As it was the most popular flavour it had to be done in huge quantities, however, a
single person could deseed only 2 kilograms of it a day. Eventually he found a machine
to do it.

Even his educational background poised a problem to him at one point of time. He was
unable to handle the taxation issues

%he Indian Ice cream market

The ice cream market witnesses a lot of action during summer as the companies in
order to achieve maximum sales and compete amongst the others in market release
hordes of promotional campaigns, advertisement and summer schemes. The market is
broadly divided into the branded and the grey market, the latter consisting of small and
cottage industry players. The total market is worth Rs. 2000 crores of which the branded
market is valued at Rs. 800 crore. The Indian ice cream market is characterized as a
highly seasonal market, as in winter the sales fall sharply and in summer there is a
steep increase in sales.

The major brands include Kwality Walls, Amul and Mother Dairy. With a market share
of 10% HLL is the second largest player in the branded ice cream segment after Amul
which enjoys a whopping 37% market share.

Amul R. S. Sodhi, General Manager (Marketing), Gujarat Corporation Milk Marketing
Federation (GCMMF), said, 'During summer on an average sales increase by 30-35%.
Our offers such as combo packs and 1+1 free etc. increase during summers.' Amul
recently launched a range of Probiotic and sugar free ice creams targeting or rather
catering to the health conscious and diabetic touching a new category of consumers
who were unable to indulge in delightful ice creams. The sales turnover for the year
2007-08 was Rs. 52554 million (1325 USD). The organization is a state level apex body
of milk cooperatives in gujarat which aims to provide remunerative returns to the
farmers and has 13141 village societies and 13 district cooperative milk producers'
Union.

Mother Dairy Mother Dairy ice creams launched in the year 1995 have shown
continuous growth over the years and today has approximately 62% market share in
Delhi and NCR. It introduced new flavours like O'blast, an orange based ice cream
dessert and the Toffee Twist. Its brand Chillz targeting the entire family aired its TV
commercial with the tagline, 'Goodness Inside'. It has a range of ice creams particularly
targeting children, like the Lic Lolleez, Cool buddies. It also targets the segment
aggressively it arranges a media blitzkrieg in summers and plans to increase the
number of carts outside schools, hold contests and promotions, offering goodies to
them
.
Kwallity Walls : Kwallity Wall's was launched in 1995 as Hindustan Unilever Ltd 's.
master brand for ice creams and Unilever claims to be the world's biggest ice cream
manufacturer, with an annual turnover of C5 billion. Its products are termed as 'Pleasure
Food', and enjoy great popularity. Some of them are Cornetto, Feast, Paddle Pop. By
introducing a new product, Moo, a calcium enriched ice cream, the company lured kids
and their mothers with its nutritional offering. HLL is also planning to extend its retail
brand 'Kwallity Walls Swirls' parlours in accordance with the growing number of
shopping malls across the country. At present there are 30 such parlours across India.

However, the organised players have not been able to extend their distribution chain to
small villages/towns due to the size of the market being small there and the
nonavailability of cold chain. The Indian ice-cream market is hence still dominated by a
large number of small local manufacturers and regional players. For instance, players
like Pastonji and Dinshaw`s in Maharshtra, Vadilal in Gujarat, Arun Ice-creams in south
India enjoy a dominant position in their respective regional markets.

Pastonji, Baskin Robbins and Natural`s ice-cream are some significant players in
Mumbai as they have a wide and strong distribution network. While Pastonji has
franchisee operations at Pune, Nashik, Jaipur and Mehsana, Natural`s operations are
restricted to Maharashtra and Gujarat at present. Pastonji has already launched new
items in special shape and well decorated containers like magic swirl, sundae tubs, mini
sandwich, mini sundae/swirl etc.
In the last two years, Mumbai has been fortunate to experience the Gelato- an Italian
icecream. A number of gelato serving parlours have mushroomed in the city. These
parlours are also ready to make competition fierce with their unique and innovative
flavours which are launched during summer. Amore, started just a year ago and has
successfully established itself considering quality and innovation.

Natural Ice Cream`s Positioning Strategy

Natural has been manufacturing 100% vegetarian ice creams and this has given it an
edge in the Indian market. Considering the religious aspect within the country, the
consumers would not hesitate to consume a scoop of Natural ice cream on any day of
the year.

a) Product range To quote Mr. Kamath, 'in the food industry, one must have
something different, the serving style, the item or the taste. You must give your
customer something unique, only then you can survive'. In line with his principle
Natural ice cream constantly introduces new fruit flavours. It also introduced the
raw mango flavour and called it 'Pickle', and it aroused a great response. It
follows a model of Product Innovation and with it has created a niche for itself
hence distinguishing it from its competitors. The flavours available at Naturals
are generally fruit based, besides the other dry fruit and chocolate based.
However it is observed that customers' at Naturals often prefer the fruit based to
the other flavours. Unlike the machine-made ice-cream, Natural's hand-churned
ice-cream is not whipped, so it is denser, creamier and richer. That makes
consumers who have tasted it never want to settle for artificially- flavoured mass
produced ice-cream again. Hand-churned ice-cream is structurally different from
industrially made ice-cream since hand-churned ice-cream doesn't contain
emulsifiers; it tastes best within a day or two of making it. Also, hand-churned
ice-cream contains no preservatives and often contains fruit, so it must be eaten
fresh. Natural also converts their ice creams to milkshakes priced reasonably.

b) Price : Rs. 28 bucks a scoop is perhaps the lowest price among branded ice
creams. One cannot classify its indulgence on the price factor but can on the taste
factor. Creamy ice creams which combine Indian kulfi with natural flavours with
fruit pieces in them is an innovation which Indian consumer had never
experienced. Some ice creams are available around the year. Like the chocolate
almond, choco cream, coffee walnut, mango, badam, kesar pista and anjeer. Some like
the chickoo, sitaphal, papaya - pineapple, tender coconut & water melon are seasonal.
But they all are priced at the same amount. The Natural outlets also offer a waffle
cone for just an additional Rs. 5 against its competitors like Baskin Robbins who
charge Rs. 11 for it.

c) Place Each Natural parlour is opened after a demographic and demand analysis
of the region is done. The potential franchisees usually do the analysis and give
the report to the company. Recently counters in malls like the Mega Mall in
Mumbai have commenced. This is done to increase their visibility and serve the
customers whose shopping habits are shifting from shops to malls.

d) Processes (Service Quality Offered) Along with being served at the parlours,
customers also are offered free home delivery. If informed a day prior, Natural
even arranges to carry ice creams in thermocol boxes when on a long journey or
on a picnic. A rigid quality control program is followed at the company at its
Mumbai plant. As the product is fruit based and quickly perishable it ensures that
the delivered quantity is consumed within ten days. Based on the customer
response and the fact that a complaint of being served stale or poor quality ice
cream at Natural is not yet heard of speaks for itself.

e) Physical Evidence Its outlets provide good ambience, with seating facility that
gives a warm experience to the customers.

etwork

Suppliers The main raw materials for ice cream manufacturing are milk, sugar and
fruits. They have dedicated supplier for each product who are also responsible for timely
delivery. Fruits are bought from Metro and the APMC market situated in Vashi, Mumbai.
APMC caters to the seasonal fruit requirement and the Metro market supplies off
season fruits to the company's factory located in Kandivali, Mumbai. All the suppliers
are local to reduce the cost of transportation.

Franchise The potential franchisee studies the area in terms of its capacity,
competitors and demand factor. The franchisees have to pay a deposit of Rs 10 lakh to
the company before he begins operations.
Distributors As it is a premium product the company does not believe in selling to the
customers through the local shops. Distribution is centralized from the Mumbai factory.
For distributing the product from the factory to the outlet in Mumbai, Nasik and Pune,
the
company has dedicated vans and trucks. However for the outlets at Ahmedabad the
company uses thermocol packing which has sustainability for 24 hours and uses the
railway services to deliver.

Success and the Future

Natural ice cream has achieved its success sans advertising and also seems confident
that it is a household name and has a stream of loyal customers. It has created a niche
which keeps at bay the threats posed by any new entrant. However now with the
increasing opportunities and the expanding market through India's liberalization Kamath
sees the need to expand. It is continuing to innovate and experiment to provide new and
unique flavours to its consumers. It already has around 100 natural flavours, but that
does not stop him from introducing more of them.


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becomes crysLuI cIeur wILIIn 1o mInuLes oI sLrIkIng u conversuLIon wILI RugIunundun
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compuny oI MumbuI`s weII-known NuLuruI ce Creum.
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someLIIng Lo sLund ouL. TIIs Is wIen my Iove uIIuIr
wILI IruILs begun, suys KumuLI.
R.S Kamath, 54, CMD Our Times ce C that has a current turnover of Rs
30 crore
CurrenLIy operuLIng ouL oI u q,ooo-squure-IooL IucLory
LIuL produces Iour Lo IIve Lonne oI Ice-creum every
duy, KumuLI soon pIuns Lo sIIIL InLo u zo,ooo-squure-IooL sLuLe-oI-LIe-urL IucIIILy.
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BunguIore nexL yeur.
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spInner, wILI un unnuuI Lurnover oI Rs . crore.
L wus un unIorLunuLe encounLer wILI LIe ncome Tux
DepurLmenL LIuL Ied Lo LIe compuny`s expunsIon. Iud
no knowIedge ubouL keepIng reguIur uccounLs, suys
KumuLI, wIo IosL everyLIIng Lo LIe Lux depurLmenL In
1qqq excepL IIs brund nume und IIs recIpes.
TIIs Is wIen Ie decIded Lo udopL LIe IruncIIsee modeI.
TIougI LIe munuuI Iubour eurIIer necessury Ior Ice
creums Ius been done uwuy wILI, sourcIng equIpmenL
Iusn`L been eusy Ior KumuLI. SInce Ie InsIsLs on noL
usIng sLubIIIsers, urLIIIcIuI coIours und IngredIenLs, LIe
mucIInes Iud Lo be cusLom mude.
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NuLuruI Ius InLroduced 1oo dIIIerenL IIuvours LIII now und Ius z1 on ILs menu rIgIL now.
ScoopuIoIIc, Isn`L Ie?

Soccess muntru: Even LIougI NuLuruI
Ius InLroduced 1oo IIuvours LIII now,
KumuLI Is sLIII experImenLIng.
%orning point: WIen Ie IosL IIs enLIre
Income Lo LIe T depurLmenL In 1qqq Ior
IuIIure Lo keep proper uccounLs.
Growth puth: L Look IIm z yeurs Lo
open 1 ouLIeLs. Now Ie pIuns Lo doubIe
LIe number wILIIn LIe nexL yeur.