Future Group bets big on desi flavours to capture 'heart share'

After four years of ideation and planning, the Future Consumer Enterprise (FCEL) has become India’s first sourcing-to-supermarkets food company. An idea germinated through Kishore Biyani, Founder and CEO, Future Group, FCEL today has a ‘unique board with maturity, entrepreneurship and good business management’ with the capacity to optimise the ability of each board member to do their best.

With an expected growth in consumption of food and HPC goods, FCEL is looking at a growth in consumption of $895 billion by 2020. The consumption in the year 2000 stood at $135 billion, which had gone up to $328 billion in the year 2010.

Taking into consideration the cultural values of food, FCEL has come up with brands that are in line with the eating habits of Indians. Apart from understanding the Indian memes to keep the products in line with the consumer needs, FCEL aims to provide lowest cost FMCG supply chain with 27 brands and 64 categories.

Kishore Biyani remarked, “In India, it’s not just about mind share, it’s about heart share.”

Contributing to modernisation, FCEL has come up with brands like Desi Atta providing 21 variants of flour. With innovations like fasting attas the brand has seen a positive response and is also about to launch Wheat Oat Atta. Some of the other popular food brands are Golden Harvest, Kosh, Ektaa and Sunkist. FCEL has also tied up with Nilgiris, a popular dairy and baked products brand since 1905. FCEL signed a MOU with LT foods to come up best quality rice for the Indian consumers. Frozen foods are also in the picture to ease the work load of the lady of the house.

Apart from the food brands, FCEL has emerged with HPC brands with new and innovative products like the Kara facial wipes, which are first of its kinds. Other brands on board are Kramiq, Clean Mate, Think Skin and many others. Another innovation will be the launch of pooja goods with the brand Pratha.

FCEL has joined hands with various people to meet the manufacturing requirements. A manufacturing unit has been set up in Sri Lanka to produce Oats introduced by Kosh. Land has also been acquired in Nagpur to set up manufacturing units. FCEL has also tied up with the Rajasthan Government to get into partnership distribution. FCEL plans to build urban convenience store for metro cities and cash-n-carry rural distribution models for other cities across India to elongate its market.

Logistic chains and modern distribution are some of the reasons why FCEL is a leading brand. Distribution is being developed to enhance the performance of the brand. At present FCEL is serving 120 cities, 574 districts and 20,000 pin codes to satiate the consumer needs.