Drum Foods International launched Epigamia in 2015 and introduced Greek yogurt as a complementary venture to the notably seasonal ice cream industry. The brand was determined to turn healthy food consumption into a routine, the brand prioritized maintaining both taste and eschewing preservatives, resulting in an elegant and nutritious fresh food alternative.
In a conversation with Medianews4u, Isha Dhoble – VP, Marketing & Strategy, Epigamia spoke about the brand’s 9 year journey, marketing strategies and more.
“When we started off, we were sure that we wanted to stay away from conventional codes of the dairy industry, which was communicated through our packaging and the way we were communicating with our customers. That has helped us differentiate ourselves from the traditional dairy market and create a niche for ourselves. The core of our brand has actually stayed the same along with that brand promise and purpose has also stayed the same. We believed in giving innovative products and pushing boundaries than a dairy can do, we are still focused on doing that. What has evolved is the kind of products and the consumption occasions we are catering to. Earlier we started with Yogurts but now our product portfolio has expanded to beverages, desserts etc. We are catering to a lot more occasions through a lot more products,” said Dhoble.
For the brand, the D2C Channel is a way to interact and get feedback from the customers.
“We have employed this channel to get feedback not only on the new products but also communicate more about the products and seek what more the consumers need from the brand, that is where our marketing insights come from,” she added.
Dhoble underlines that Epigamia’s website is more of a strategy channel for them than a sales channel.
The brand has extended its Greek yogurt range with an addition of ‘Greek Yogurt + Oats & Seed Mix’. The yogurt is premixed with oats, chia, flax, and amaranth seeds.
“When we were interacting with our core customers who are regularly consuming our products, we understood that a lot of them consume yogurt with a lot of seeds, granola, nuts, oats etc. We realized that it is an opportunity we have to tap into it and that we should give them this offering in a convenient on-the-go format, that’s what we did with this product. The response has been amazing and we are also getting great feedback for not adding sugar in it (we use honey and dates to sweeten it). It is just the start. We will see how the product gets accepted going forward. As far as the marketing is concerned, we are marketing the product through our sales channels,” said Dhoble.
Apart from that, the brand is also planning to do a lot of sampling.
“We are also using the current product packaging to communicate about this product because the existing Epigamia customer is going to be the first set of consumers for the product,” she added.
TG for Epigamia is gender agnostic and the age group between 28-35 years.
“These are the people who look for quality products, they want some functional benefits from the products they consume. The baseline is that this customer doesn’t want to compromise on the taste. That’s the kind of customer persona we go after,” she said.
As far as the geographical distribution is concerned, Epigamia majorly have been distributed in Tier 1 and Tier 2 towns so far.
“Our major footholds are the Tier 1 cities. We are planning to expand beyond Tier2 cities. We have started with Tier 3 and Rural obviously will take some time, we need to expand our product offerings too, before we expand to those geographical areas,” added Dhoble.
Speaking about the consumption patterns observed, she said, “people have become a lot more conscious of what they eat and the ingredients they consume. People read more back of the pack now than ever before. They are educated on what is good and what is not. That kind of translates into the way they choose food. The awareness around preservatives, proteins and no sugar is increasing. We have observed that our consumers are also talking about that.”
“The category of Yogurts has been around the longest. It is the largest contributor in our revenues which is closely followed by the beverage category which include milk shakes. We have recently launched drinkable yogurt which is an on-the-go product priced at Rs 30, which is also adding to the beverage category. Then desserts followed by Plant based products. Plant based products in general is not a huge category in the country today, it’s definitely emerging but compared to the dairy category it is at a very nascent stage right now,” she said.
The most popular product of the brand is Greek Yogurt and specifically the Blueberry flavor.
Speaking about the marketing strategies for the brand, Dhoble said, ”The way we approach our marketing is twofold. One is reaching consumers through our sales channels. Whether it is our own website, e-commerce, Quick-Commerce, or the stores we are selling in, we invest a lot in actually reaching the consumers through these channels. We do visibility and ad searches on the online platforms, which is a strong pillar for us in terms of reaching out to consumers. Other than that, on the brand side when we are trying to reach customers and communicate about new products, we stick to digital channels only. The traditional channels while they work are not best in terms of ROI in our case. Hence, we stick to digital platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Google, where we talk about and promote our products.”
The brand retails across approximately 20,000+ touchpoints in 30+ towns with 24 SKUs at the moment, which includes modern trade chains like DMart, Reliance, Nature’s Basket, and More retail; e-commerce platforms like Big Basket, Swiggy, Amazon, Zepto, BlinkIt, and numerous general trade retailers.
Almost 40 pc of Epigamia’s business comes from Digital platform which includes e-Commerce, QuickCommerce and their own website. “Around 60 pc comes from our offline channels which include the general and modern trade,”
Currently Epigamia is getting distributed in 20,000 stores and are planning to expand to 50,000 stores in the next 2-3 years.
