Rasna to introduce new flavours, focus on promoting honey, says Chairman Piruz Khambatta

After introducing an orange masala variant early this year, Rasna is set to launch more Indian flavours as it looks to expand in the powdered-drink space.

According to Chairman Piruz Khambatta, Rasna will introduce new flavours like aam panna, nimbu masala, and jamun.

“We are getting active about Indian flavours. We were the first ones to launch a product that has spice in orange and which Kareena is endorsing. It's called masala orange and now we are getting into more variants,” Khambatta said.

Currently, the fruit-based concentrate manufacturing major offers plain fruit flavours such as orange, mango, pineapple, guava, litchi, and watermelon.

Rasna is the market leader with 85 percent share in the Rs 1,000 crore-powdered drink space that is growing at 15-20 percent annually. Tang, owned by Mondelez, is the other known brand in the space.

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Rasna is owned by Ahmedabad-based Pioma Industries. It was launched in mid-seventies but started gaining popularity in the eighties even when the market was dominated by carbonated soft drinks like Thums up, Gold Spot and Limca.

Diversification

Last year, the company also ventured into honey under the brand 'Rasna Native Haat'. The company plans to aggressively promote the product this winter.

“In the last winter we did test market of honey but this winter we will be promoting and selling more of honey,” Khambatta said.

Rasna sells all its products on e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and BigBasket.

Khambatta refrained from sharing numbers for sales through e-commerce platforms but said, “Online sales is slightly picking up. When we do offers, sales pick up. People usually go to online for bulk offers, so whenever we give offers they spike.”

The company also plans to launch 2-3 new products in the next few years, Khambatta said without disclosing any further details.

Rasna has a distribution network of over 1.6 million outlets in towns and villages.