-Ayshwaria Lakshmi
AMK Krishna, one of the leading rice brands in India, has plans to install a new factory in two years at Kangeyam, Tamil Nadu to meet the demand in both domestic and international markets. The company exports contributed to 15 per cent of total revenue in 2019 and 23 per cent in 2020. This factory is expected to increase the capacity five times more than what they have and in the international standards.
“We also have plans to increase our sale percentage in the international markets,” D Arun Chandran, Managing Director, AMK Krishna told MediaNews4U. “We will penetrate our brand deeper into the existing markets. As of the newer markets, the highest rice consuming markets like Sri Lanka, we get orders for the food grain exporters in these regions,” regarding the geographical expansion plans,” Chandran added.
He went on to tell me that the current reach in the international market wasn’t a smooth process. It started as a gradual process, where we would do one or two consignments at a time. The company would take part in food expos and others like it to get visibility. This recognition helped them infiltrate into the international markets. Currently, the brand has a presence in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Qatar, Dubai, South Africa, and Australia.
Campaign Plans:
The brand is well-known in the Kongu region of Tamil Nadu covering Erode, Tirupur and Coimbatore. However, they had started to focus on other parts of Tamil Nadu as well, mainly Chennai city now.
“We listed our products in e-com sites like Amazon and Flipkart getting good business there we developed our own shopping site to give the customer our products at a reasonable cost,” Nithya Tamizharasu, who leads the digital promotion and marketing team in AMK Krishna. Speaking on the marketing initiatives and digital reach of the product she added “We are focussing on Radio ads now curating specific programs for our products and this gave us good reach, and we also started focussing on digital promotions.”
On the challenges faced by an SME advertiser like them for promotion, Nithya said, “When we get into campaigning and promotions, we are forced to give some freebies and offers as other competitors. Being a manufacturer of a premium quality product, there we face challenges in cutting down our margin for the sake of customer satisfaction in the introductory level.”
Additional to the above challenges, COVID has created a need for them to focus on marketing towards households shifting from institutional canteens, hotels and restaurant sectors. Initially, the team worked on how this campaign can be carried out and with e-com sites we could tap that household sector. The brand has given importance to digital promotions, creating attractive posters and posting up in their social media handles. They actively engage in them and have running YouTube ads for product promotions.
