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Swedish 'Click' dares to chew gutkha

Surajeet Das Gupta

Click, a tobacco product launched by Tirven Consumer Products, is set to take on the desi gutkha giants and cigarette companies. The product shows no dangerous side effects normally associated with gutkha or smoking, the company claims.

Tirven Consumer Products is a joint venture between Swedish Match Company and match manufacturers Wimco. Swedish Match has a 49 per cent equity stake in Tirven and the rest is divided between Wimco and Wimco Foods.

Though imported from Sweden, Click is made of tobacco grown specially in Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh. The moist-grounded oral tobacco product is available in a pouch, which has to be placed between the upper lip and the gum -- something like local 'khaini' consumed by millions.

Tirven aims at the upper-end tobacco chewers and cigarette smokers market. A pouch of two Click is priced at Rs 5, while a can with 10 pouches would be available at Rs 25.

The product is pasteurised and a special process helps in reduction of all harmful tobacco specific nitosamines harmful for health, Tirven says. Tobbaco is specially cooked with flavours, which also reduce the harmful ingredients.

Says Biswaroop Mukherji, president and CEO of Tirven: "We had earlier targeted the product for the user of Classic cigarettes, but they have increased the price. Now we have targeted it at the smoker who uses Wills and Gold Flake."

Mukherji says the target users customers in the age category of 25-40 with a monthly income between Rs 14,000 to Rs 20,000 per annum.

He, however, points out that it is difficult to gauge the size of the market as it is a totally new product category. "We have been doing research for the last two years and have come to the conclusion that the Indian tobacco market and the customers have matured, so it is time to introduce a new product category," Mukherji said.

But the domestic tobacco industry is unfazed. Says D S Group (maker of Rajni Gandha pan masala) vice-president Ashok Agarwal: "Consumers in India like to mix pan masala with tobacco. That is why gutkha is so popular. Tobacco on its own does not work. In the past also, before pan masala happened, people had tobacco in pan, which contained supari. So the two have always gone together in India."

"They are going to be competitors to the gutkha, cigarette smokers are a different category," a senior executive of ITC said.

Click is consumed by as much as 11 per cent of the total population. The product has been cleared by the Swedish Foods Standards which lays down strict health parameters.

Tirven has already started test marketing the product in Bombay and plans to distribute it in as many as 5,000 out of the 30,000 pan outlet in the city. It plans to then extend it slowly in other markets like Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore amongst others.

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