Gold Winner
Gold Winner is a household name in refined oils segment in Tamil Nadu. The group has come a long way from its humble beginnings and is looking at the large industrial oil and fats market for its expansion plans. In an exclusive interview to Sify.com, Director, Gold Winner , M Arun, spoke about the beginnings of his group, the hectic pace at which it has grown and his plans and its foray into the industrial fats segment.

Excerpts from the interview:

Can you tell us about the history of the Gold Winner group?
My father, G Munusamy, is not just a first generation entrepreneur, but an extraordinary one. My father entered business with a humble general grocery store in the 1970s before setting up an edible oil store. Shortly after he set up the oil store, he moved on to trading in bulk quantities of edible oil. A little over 10 years ago, my father, was a bulk trader in edible oils before he acquired an ailing refinery and turned around its fortunes. By the early nineties, he was trading approximately, 50,000 tons of edible oil per year.

Gold Winner was a price player in the market. And you had also gone for sachets. How did it pay off?
When Gold winner hit the market, there was scope for packaged edible oil. But there was a misconception that anything that came packaged had to be expensive. Gold Winner broke the psychological barrier by launching one -litre sachets at an affordable price. And it did pay off. Brand Gold Winner grew from strength to strength. Gold Winner was ranked 75th among India's biggest Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) by A C Nielsen. Earlier, an ORG-MARG survey also had rated Gold Winner as number one in the FMCG (edible oils) category in south India.

How are your exports doing? You seem to be making quite a name in the field? And what about extending your reach to new areas in the north?
Today, Gold Winner has major export plans targeting Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Gulf region. As far as the strategy of Gold Winner in domestic market is concerned, it is going to be twin-pronged, consolidation and expansion. The company has already widened its distribution network to cover all the southern states, and has made inroads into Maharashtra. And plans are afoot to launch the product in Orissa and West Bengal.

On your marketing strategy.. what's your winning idea?
The Area Sales Managers at Gold Winner don't do marketing in conventional ways. The organisation does not focus on setting targets and meeting distributors. We have enough ways of feeling the pulse of the customers. Our managers spend a lot of time interacting with housewives. They see the demos happening in the kitchen and pass on the feedback to us. Everything is informal here. Since the organisation is lean and mean, there is no need for structured review meetings.

Gold Winner TV commercials seem to target NRI consumers, too. Any specific strategy here?
In south India oil is an important issue to us. Even after our people leave the shores of India, they do not forget their roots, especially when it comes to food habits. Relatives visiting them take lot of things from India, right from pickles to Basmati rice. In fact, it is consumer inputs that have guided all our export market forays. We will be launching our exports in three different directions to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Gulf.
We don't have plans to set up refineries outside India. Gold Winner will be necessarily exported out of India. We plan to manufacture a sizable tonnage by the end of the first year. For that phase we have set an export target of 1000 metric tonnes.

How do you plan to capture the overseas market. Can you take on the costs of advertising and distribution?
We are looking at strategic marketing alliances in all these countries where we would be exporting Gold Winner. We are not going to give it directly to the distribution chains. Partners will be chosen after a lot of consideration. The partner will do all the work in that country for us. Already we have formalised some alliances and some are in the process of finalisation. Overseas marketing strategy will be built up with the familiarity and the trust commanded by the Gold Winner brand. Advertising doesn't come cheap. What comes free of cost is word-of-mouth. That's going to be our starting point.

P C Vinoj Kumar