It's A Job, No Kiddin'

HERE'S a novel, inexpensive way to eat into the Rs 1,100 crore confectioneries' market: ask kids with a sweet tooth to join your company.

This is exactly what Candico (India) Limited, the Rs 65-crore offshoot of the confectionery major Bakeman's Industries Limited, has done. And since the market promises to grow nearly six-fold in the next eight years, the company is sparing no sugar on its candies to capture it. Last week, the formal announcement of the new corporate entity was made at a press conference in Delhi. Prior to this, the company had, through ads in all the major Indian dailies, invited children aged between 10 and 16 years to be 'R&D advisors' to Candico. The response has been tremendous.

What does the job entail? Well, that's the really 'sweet' part. The children are expected to advise Candico on the acceptance of products to be launched shortly in the market. What's more, the 12 children chosen after a nationwide contest would be expected to 'attend office' during their holidays—visit the plants and head office. Finally, the icing on the cake: the children would be paid an honorarium of Rs 24,000 for the period of one year. The kids are to be a part of what the company calls the Young Consultants Programme (YCP).

There is nothing new about the idea, insists Candico chairman and managing director, Sanjiv Kumar. "Earlier we had some children advising us on our products. But that was an informal arrangement." New products will now be sent to the YCs, who will taste them, ask friends and relatives for reactions and send in their recommendations to the company.

The YCP idea aims to kill four birds with one stone. The contest will promote high recall for Candico's products even though competitors like Parry's and Nutrine are established brands. It gives Candico's Mint-O further ammunition in its crucial three-year-old running battle with Nestle's Polo. When Polo tried to sell the 'buy a hole and get a mint free' concept, Mint-O rebutted this by wondering aloud why people needed a hole in their mints when they didn't have a hole in their head. The contest will also generate a huge database of child consumers, which can be used for focused marketing activities. In the 12 YCs, the company will get a band of dedicated propagandists with better access and credibility to the target audience. This should help Candico develop better products.

The idea for this novel strategy seems to have germinated after Sanjiv Kumar and his brother Rajiv Kumar, who together promoted Bakeman's 20 years ago, began having differences on the path the company should take in the future. The two brothers decided to part quietly. A formal decision to hive off the company's operations into two businesses was taken last year. Candico has inherited Mint-O, the popular mint brand, and is launching a spate of new brands of candies.

This isn't all Candico is doing to capture a large chunk of the candies market which is expected to swell to Rs 1,900 crore by the end of the decade. In fact, a recent Mckinsey report projects industry size to touch Rs 6,000 crore by the year 2005.

The launch of several new products, including Rock Candy, for which the company is seeking a global patent, is in the pipeline. To ensure that the products can compete with MNC brands, Candico is sourcing its gumbase—an essential ingredient for the manufacture of chewing gum—from Euro-base, a Belgian company, one of the six in the world which possesses the technology.

After its focus on children, is a chocolate for diabetics next? Quips Sanjiv Kumar: "Patience should be their virtue". It's only natural for him to be speaking of patience. He knows there are more children than diabetics in the country.