Raw Pressery guns ahead with global plans; eyes 4,000 POS this fiscal: Anuj Rakyan

Anuj Rakyan, Founder & MD, Raw Pressery, has ambitious plans for his brand, where he sees it expanding all over the world in the next five years. Quality is the key focal area, along with scaling the product to make it widely available to the consumers. 

Founded in the year 2014, Raw Pressery is India’s largest cold-pressed juice brand. Incorporated as a part of Rakyan Beverages, Raw Pressery is a vertically integrated company with in-house capabilities in farm-produce procurement, processing, manufacturing, cold chain logistics, warehousing and distribution. 

Raw Pressery took birth in Rakyan’s kitchen with a Norwalk cold-press juicer splattering carrots all over the ceiling. From just 8 juices, the company has now grown to include 4 categories – Benefits, Basics, Boosters and Soups, with over 18 juices in their portfolio, including India’s first ever bottled Ganne Ka Rass (sugarcane juice). 

The brand recently launched is annual integrated media campaign – All Good No Bad – and has been amplifying this philosophy through all their communication on digital and print media. This campaign has also gone live through the OOH platform across Mumbai, Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai. 

The campaign has been conceptualised and designed keeping in mind the visual identity of the brand that has been fruit centric/ ingredient led. All 28 variants of the brand best embody the philosophy of ‘All Good No Bad’ – keeping in the nutrition while keeping out preservatives, chemicals, added sugar and water. 

In conversation with Adgully, Anuj Rakyan speaks about the brand’s journey so far, the challenges faced, expansion plans and more. Excerpts: 

How has Raw Pressery’s journey in the Indian market been so far?
What started off with a process of making healthy and fresh juice in my kitchen has today expanded into a nationally scaled business with some international distribution. It is essentially fulfilling the gap of being able to provide a fresh and healthy nutrition juice to organised retail sector. In India, everybody has tasted fresh juice, but they can’t really buy it from any store because it is generally made at home or in those juice centres at street corners and have to be consumed immediately. 

So, what we have really done is that we have tried to organise an unorganised market by using very innovative technology, by creating a cold train for supplying and allowing consumers to have a much more conscious and valuable choice of purchasing juice, instead of drinking concentrated, pasteurised juice in tetra packs. 

What are the challenges that the brand has faced?
When you look at the market, I think Raw Pressery has a reason to exist today. People around the world today are becoming more health conscious about what they consume, how they exercise, how they manage their work-life balance. Even if Raw Pressery hadn’t existed, people have been becoming more serious about their fitness. The sensibility in Indian consumers already exists and now it’s growing. Although it is at a very nascent stage, but the direction is towards growth. 

Keeping all these things in mind, we have started at the right time. The idea behind an entrepreneurial business is that we are visionaries and we are ahead of the curve in the things that we have started. 

Talking about the challenges, these are typical to those of other young business start-ups, which includes capital, marketing, developing a product and acquiring consumers. In our case, because our products are fresh and chilled, we have to have proper and good source of fruits and vegetables in India. We also have to store it and supply it at the right temperature. Retail was the biggest challenge because in retail chilled beverages never existed before, but we created that category. We actually have to create an entire shelf space. It’s been just two and a half years for us in retail and we have created maximum amount of distribution visibility only because the consumers wants something different. Basically, performance has let us to overcome all the challenges. 

Given the high price range of the product, are you only targeting the metro markets?
Price is a function of value. We have two types of consumers: one, who actually make juices at their home, but typically when you make juice at your home and calculate the cost of all the fruits that have been utilised while making the juice, it would be equal to or more than the price that we have for our brand. We are not actually a high price brand. This is just like fresh juice that one makes at home. But it is made in a much more superior manner and is easily available. We are not core expensive like any other fresh juice that one would make at home. Secondly, if you compare it with the tetra pack juice brands, it is not a proper comparison between two equal things. In tetra packs, you are getting 10 per cent concentrate plus 80 per cent water with some added preservatives. But in Raw Pressery, it’s only real and fresh juice. So obviously, if something has 100 per cent real fruits, it is bound to have a certain higher price as compared to others. 

Our customers have begun to understand that this brand stands for value and I don’t believe that in India people are constrained by price. In fact, the market is expanding in India as people understand the value. 

Our consumers are people in the age group of 18-49, who live in metros as well Tier 1 markets and speak and understand English. In India, nearly 60 per cent of the population is below the age of 35 and these people mostly have English as their first language. This makes a difference in what they read, watch and what they aspire for. There is a large bunch of people who have intense focus on fitness and fashion, due to their hectic lifestyle they just don’t have time to grab healthy and fresh stuff. This is new age India, where the number of people in this particular segment is increasing day-by-day. 

What are your expansion plans for the brand?
Currently, we have 2,000 points of sales, which we plan to expand to about 4,000 in this fiscal year. We have also completed our test pilot in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha and will further extend our capabilities in the Middle East, which we see as a very promising market. 

In terms of category, we started off as a juice company but now we are a clean label beverage brand. Clean label means everything which is pure, fresh and natural without any additives, and we describe this in four simple words – ‘All Good, No Bad’. 

Today, we are into juices, smoothies, almond milk, and instant soups, which we are launching in India for the first time. These are some things that consumers want and even if other brands are selling it, consumers don’t believe they are under the clean label category. 

How are you strengthening your marketing and advertising efforts?
We have completed large chunks of outdoor campaigns in 6 cities, including Mumbai. Outdoor happens for us once in a year. We are very active with digital marketing. We have allocated 35-40 per cent of our spends on digital advertising. Apart from social media, we have our website. We also do lots of events across the country to create awareness about the brand. 

We also have an influencer in the form of Jacqueline Fernandes. She also actively promotes the brand as she is a big believer in our brand.

For More Stories Visit Here.