Nestle India to focus on mass market in coffee

New Delhi: Nestle India has now outlined plans to grow its coffee business, having met with a fair measure of success with the launch of its probiotic range of frozen dairy products earlier. Nestle India''s ''Cafés'' are the next salvo in its armament, which it has chosen to woo the masses with, having decided to go the other way from the more "exclusive" coffee chains such as Café Coffee Day and Barista, which target the upper middle class youth segment. Nestle India CEO Martial Rolland has been reported as saying that through these café''s, Nestle''s idea is to create a sustainable model, which is scalable, and that the company uses these outlets as ''laboratories'' for trying out new products and test marketing their levels of acceptance with consumers, specially with the newer variants of coffee. Undeterred by competition that the coffee chains could possibly churn out, Nestle is ''happy'' with the increasing number of players who form its competition, as it says that overall, competition will expose more consumers to coffee, in what is predominantly a tea-drinking country. Nestle''s differentiator vis-à-vis the coffee chains, according to Rolland, is affordability of its products. Targeting the bottom of the pyramid, Nestle has competitively priced its brands in the category, as well as the blends used in the products. Given that Indian tastes differ from the global preference of strong flavour of coffee, Nestle uses blends in the country specific to consumer tastes. Based on this consumer insight, Nestle recently launched a new product, ''Nescafe Mild'', which is targeted specifically at the mass market of tea drinkers. Nestle also reportedly plans to continue with its cafes across India using the franchisee model, choosing to focus on product delivery rather than ambience. Including other locations, Nestle has its cafés positioned in the corners across schools, colleges and offices, retailing most of its products including chocolates, the popular "Maggi" noodles, and its range of ready to drink ice-teas and chocolate and cold coffee mixes. Talking about cold coffee as a product, the company has noticed, through its experiences with its Café outlets, that though the market for products such as cold coffee is still very small in India, there is a significant and growing demand for it, which the company may choose to address through future product launches in the category. Rolland says that, the coffee market in India in itself is rather small, and presents a tremendous opportunity for growth.