Exclusive | Healthy choice for Indian consumers: KSMD's Sital

With joint ventures across Europe, Malaysia and South Africa, Netherlands based KSMD Holding is a trades in oils & oil related products, FMCG goods and a wide variety of other products. The company has manufacturing facilities in Cyprus and Greece and it distributes Hercules brand olive oil in Malaysia, Singapore, China and South Africa. Through strategic alliances with internationally renowned oil companies, Costa d'Oro and Il Tempio, KSMD’s products are sold across the world.

Recently the company has forayed into the Indian market by launching two variants of its globally popular olive oil brands,  -  IL Tempio Extra Virgin Olive Oil and IL Tempio Pomace Oil. One litre packs are priced at Rs 700 and Rs 499 in the Indian market (IL Tempio Pomace Oil is also available for Rs. 1498 in a five litre can). The products are manufactured from olives picked from the finest groves in Europe and processed in advanced world class facilities, dripping with aroma and health.

On this occasion, Adgully caught up with Sradhanand Sital, chairman & managing director, KSMD Holding BV and KSMD Impex (India) to know more about their product offerings and their presence in Indian market. He sees big opportunities in the Indian market and started off the conversation with a brief introduction of the company. He said, “We are a global trading company and have a global presence through our products in crude oil, diesel, kerosene and others. In the olive oil sector we are the fourth biggest manufacturer globally and currently are very much focused on this sector. “Our products are available in 60 countries and we have storage capacity of 2 million litres. We  have 16 olive oil products in different parts of the world,” he, added.

India has always been a large market for national and international brands, so we asked Sital about his expectations from Indian market. He replied, “Indian market has huge potential and we are expanding our activities here as it’s a complete new domain. We are also expecting healthy competition which would be good for consumers as they’ll have more options to choose from.”
As they are new, KSMD has hired one of the best professionals in India, VCOMM to help them in marketing. VCOMM will take care of company’s planning process and helps them in developing a new distribution & sales platforms.

On asked about the rationale behind Indian foray given the fact that there are brands already present in the market, Sital said, “Indians require a healthy diet more as a life policy because the fourth generation resident Indians (Sital being a fourth generation NRI) today are suffering from diabetics problems and heart diseases.”

“One can sell more products with a higher margin or vice versa but we would be providing range of products to our customers that are of much better quality and at a cheaper price. We have a set of great promotion team working,” Sital added.

KSMD’s target audience includes more of housewives and middle class. He says, “We believe that by targeting all housewives we are focusing on each family as women are more concerned about the health of their family. Though today youths are conscious about their health, but still they are not the decision makers when it comes to buying, whereas women are the manager of the house.”

Marketing is a challenge though for KSMD. Says Sital, “We found it difficult to target the market as India is a new market of more than a billion. So it’s tough to select a percentage. The next big challenge is that here in India, people are not concerned about their health unlike in Malaysia and other countries. Hence I feel promotion has to be completely different as for us we have to create an awareness first and make people health conscious which will lead to purchase of our products.” As a part of their promotion activities, they’ll be promoting it through all possible media platforms as they are very much serious about offering healthy food choices to Indian customers. They are also working on activities to create awareness and to get customers feedback. As a part of future plan, they might tie up with a food channel.

“We are promoting our products phase wise  In the first phase, Mumbai and Western Maharashtra, in the second phase Northern India as these are areas having highest consumption of olive oil,” he concluded.