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After pizzas, Amul to curry favour with soup offerings

Parul Gupta

After making things difficult for pizza companies, Gujarat Milk Marketing Federation now plans to offer intense competition to soup brands such as Maggi and Knorr.

It has decided to launch soups and "diet kadhi" in the domestic market by April this year. The products would be sold under the Amul brand name in one litre packs priced at Rs 25.

While soups would be launched in four variants including sweet corn, tomato cream and mixed vegetable, the diet kadhi would cater to people who are diet-conscious.

"The products would be launched in Delhi and Mumbai markets to begin with and depending upon the response, we will take our product national within the next few months," GMMF managing director BM Vyas told Business Standard.

He said that the foray into the soup segment is natural since it is complimentary to the existing products under the cooperative's umbrella.

"Since we make pizzas, we manufacture tomato sauce which explains the tomato soup, and since we make curd, we can easily offer kadhi," he said.

At present, there are two major players in this segment including Knorr and Nestle's Maggi. While Maggi is priced at Rs 20 for 56 gm pack, Knorr is being sold at Rs 22 for 47 gm (which translates into about 700-800 ml).

Amul would have an advantage because besides being slightly cheaper, it saves the effort of actually making the soup.

The idea behind the foray is, 'you warm it, you drink it'.

While the soups would be manufactured at its Gandhinagar facility, GMMF would be using its existing distribution network to distribute the product.

Vyas said that soups will have all the essential ingredients including vitamins and minerals and would have no artificial preservatives or ingredients.

While the company launched pizzas in the Mumbai market two weeks back, it will launch the product in Delhi by March-end.

The product which has been launched with the with the "Amul utterly delicious" tag line would be launched nationally by May-June this year.

The company has tied up with over 46 distributors in Mumbai and with about 30 distributors in Delhi to market its pizzas.

An 8-inches pizza would be available for Rs 30. A company official said that the response to the product is expected to catch up once the advertising campaign is launched during the next week.

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