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What an age to live in, isn’t it? Where hundreds of start-ups dot the Indian FMCG landscape and unicorns are no longer rare. When you look closer, you can figure out which start-ups have got an intelligent strategy in place, and which ones are burning both ends of the candle.
The one common thread that runs across all these ‘young’ companies that are climbing the rungs to success is that their vision is crystal clear. They know where they want to be, and they are willing to invest in resources that can get them to that goal.
Navin Prajapati, the National Sales Manager of mCaffeine, did exactly that. He knew that achieving aggressive growth in Kirana retail was non-negotiable. So he looked for a technology partner for whom, enabling mCaffeine to reach this target was a non-negotiable too. And he found that with FieldAssist.
Here’s a sneak peek to the amazing journey that mCaffeine and FieldAssist have embarked on together.
Launched in 2016, mCaffeine is co-founded by Tarun Sharma, Vikas Lachhwani, Vaishali Gupta, Mohit Jain and Saurabh Singhal. They embody the millennial philosophy of “natural first” in the form of a clean label. For them, product development is an exercise to address the needs of the modern lifestyle. They believe in pure, natural ingredients and pursue a rigorous clinical and dermatological testing regime.
The company is present in 4 major categories – Face Care, Hair Care, Body Care and Lip Care. They offer nearly 50 different products to consumers, of which 20 to 25 of them have been launched in this year itself. Currently, mCaffeine has an international presence in Singapore, London, Nepal & Maldives, and the company plans to launch in 20 countries in the next 6 months.
For the first couple of years, they had a few hits-and-misses, but they retained focus on perfecting their formulations, manufacturing, packaging etc. By 2018, the personal care D2C brand became a huge hit clocking Rs 5-6 crores in revenue. On e-commerce platforms, the sales team was able to have a constant pulse on their customers’ preferences because they had immediate access to this intelligence.
Now they wanted to implement the same philosophy to expand in general retail. Till last year, 34% of the revenue of the brand was coming from its own D2C channel, 65% from marketplaces, and the remaining 1% from offline. The leadership wanted to move that needle up for offline retail and build a strong, data-powered roadmap for Kirana retail.
But neither of them anticipated just how quickly the demand was going to surge. Their gift sets were literally flying off the shelves! There was no way they were going to waste such a golden opportunity of capitalizing on the growing consumer demand. So they decided to fast track their expansion plans.
Navin Prajapati, the National Sales Manager of mCaffeine had very straightforward requirements. The sales team wanted to aggressively look at placing their products in at least 10,000 outlets by August 2022. To get there, it needed a technology partner who could help the brand to not only get there but also give them proper visibility on data from day 1.
Being on so many eCommerce platforms, they realized the power of data and wanted to institutionalize the same in retail as well. So they started looking for a solution that would help them streamline their retail GTM strategy as well as bring in authentic retail intelligence.
mCaffeine had no General Trade presence when they onboarded FieldAssist in October 2021.
Within 6 months of deployment, Navin’s team reached 50% of that target, and is already on track to get to their goal, dare we say, before time! The frontline sales team has grown by 6x, and the team has adjusted well to the tech-powered sales culture where most of them are consistently logging in more than 80% attendance in the field. For Navin’s mid-managers, Flexi Trend Reports help them get better traction in the field, and they are able to implement an outlet-level strategy to maximize the outlet potential.
In the first 3 months of 2022, mCaffeine has seen:
After brewing up a storm in GT expansion and tasting success early, their next plan is to go aggressive in the Modern Trade market with our ModMart App.
The Company is planning to strengthen its presence in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat, and Bengal, as well as some parts of Chattisgarh. The recent Series C funding of Rs 240 crore has put mCaffeine on hyperdrive.
Initially, their aim was to touch about 10,000 offline points of sale by the end of the next financial year but because of significant consumer traffic growth, the company is now going full-speed ahead and broadening the reach to 25,000 stores by the end of FY23. And FieldAssist is going to be there every step of the way!
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