Brand Management

Caselet
Cooling India: The Naturals Way

Article Details

Pub. Date	:	June, 2021
Product Name	:	The IUP Journal of Brand Management
Product Type	:	Article
Product Code	:	IJBRM30621
Author Name	:	Nitu Saxena
Availability	:	YES
Subject/Domain	:	Marketing
Download Format	:	PDF Format
No. of Pages	:	5

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Abstract

Naturals ice cream is one of India's top ice-cream brands. A purely indigenous brand, owned by Kamaths Ourtimes Ice Creams Private Limited, it has been constantly upgrading and expanding since 1984. With a decent presence in western India, the company has been serving ice cream for the last three decades. Their products contain no artificial preservatives or flavors and their product offerings cut across customer segments and income classes. Some of their best flavors include tender coconut, custard apple, mango, blueberries, chikoo, etc., and they have experimented with 60 different fruit flavors and have worked assiduously on continual improvements. What started as a home-run business has expanded to more than 100 ice cream parlors and varieties of ice creams across Western India. Currently, the company is attempting to restructure its business model to include franchises so that they could expand in different territories. The founder of the company, Kamath has a dream of expanding pan India. However, this has eluded him so far due to constraints in the supply chain. Kamath is wondering about the ways to redesign and recalibrate the business model to expand Pan India with Delhi as the focal point. Hit badly during Covid, Naturals also had to take a few strategic decisions to make their operations more viable and optimize the supply chain.

Introduction

Naturals ice cream is a known name and a loved brand in western Maharashtra and parts of South India. Naturals ice cream originated from a small 300 sq. ft parlor at Juhu in 1984 and has been serving tasty and natural fruit flavored ice creams since then. The store has been renovated many times in these years and is currently three times the size of the original store. Today, the brand has more than 125 ice cream parlors and serves more than 100 varieties.

Kamaths Ourtimes Ice Creams Pvt limited has been constantly upgrading and expanding since 1984. What started as a home-run business is currently a 130 cr empire. Raghunandan Kamath and his wife Annapurna started the business by opening a store in Juhu (a north-western suburb of Mumbai) by taking a loan of 4 lakh from friends and relatives. They were probably the first to start serving ice creams in an exclusive ice cream store. Ice cream business back then was not considered a very lucrative business and not many paid attention to the details of serving ice creams in tasty flavors from dedicated ice cream parlors. They started developing tasty ice creams from blended fruits and milk.