Sathguru developed specifically tailored market access and implementation strategy for spice division of a large Indian FMCG company; opening door to US market, the largest spices and condiments market in the world.
Context: $7Bn Indian major with aspirations to grow in the competitive US spices market
Our client, a $7 billion Indian company had strong presence in the food and beverage segment spanning processed food and food ingredients. The spices business segment was built on the foundation of the company’s extensive farmer linkages and fair-trade practices. The company is a leading exporter of spices and condiments to Europe given their superior product quality and compliance to stringent food safety norms. Despite their decent market presence in Europe, the client had negligible market presence in US and was finding it difficult to penetrate lucrative but highly competitive US market. The company sought advice from Sathguru to develop US market growth strategy and support implementation through key strategic partnerships.
Scope
The scope of Sathguru’s engagement included:
- Market research, competitive landscape, value chain analysis and growth opportunity mapping: Detailed analysis of US spice market and identification of segments where client should focus for market access and growth.
- Tailored strategy and recommendations for strategically accelerating growth: Overall market strategy and market relevant product mix to penetrate identified market segments and rapidly expand presence in the US market.
- Operating plan: Develop mid-term operating plan for product development and market access including elements related to technology access and adoption, infrastructure, supply chain partnerships and human resource development.
Approach
The US market offers multiple opportunities and challenges for spice companies. Sathguru followed an internal-external assessment framework to analyze client’s strength from US market perspective and identify synergistic market access opportunities. This approach helped develop, tailored US market access strategy leveraging client’s strength and minimizing investment in product and market development.
To achieve this, Sathguru:
- Conducted a detailed internal capability assessment to evaluate client’s competency in areas of farm end connectivity, production, production development and marketing and identified its unique strengths.
- Analyzed US spice and condiment value chain to identify key market segments; major customers and competitors operating in each of the market segments; and their market potential.
- Analyzed critical requisites and expectations of customers, capabilities and value proposition offered by existing market players to identify areas of expectation-delivery gaps in each of the market segment.
- Developed an opportunity-competency matrix to analyze attractiveness of market segments given the client’s USP and prioritized segments that could generate maximum value for their investment.
- Created linkages with companies in the US that were critical for partnerships in the value chain. Within the prioritized segments, identified strategic partners in retail and branded product companies that would be critical forscleand forged the strategic partnerships. Developed mutually beneficial business models for both the client and its potential customers.
Recommendations
Sathguru recommended a tailored market access strategy for the US spices market and supported implementation by forging key strategic partnerships:
- Sathguru recommended specific market segments and potential customers within the segments from accelerating immediate to long term growth in the US spices market.
- Sathguru identified key strengths of the client that can be leveraged as unique value proposition. Sathguru tailored market penetrations recommendations based on this foundational analysis.
- Sathguru recommended product portfolio mix optimized for opportune growth avenues in the US market and developed a time frame-based product portfolio progression plan.
Sathguru identified research and development, technology and manufacturing pre-requisites critical for long term success in US food ingredients market. Based on this analysis, laid down an action plan to build capabilities in these critical building blocks.
Impact
The Strategic plan that Sathguru developed for US market access was approved by the Company’s Board and is under implementation. Sathguru went beyond strategy into catalytic implementation support in the form of strategic partnerships with key value chain partners (including large /niche retailers) in US. This provided the Client unique acceleration advantage in this complex but high growth segment of US processed food and food ingredients industry.