Online BusinessTaste the waters
The shop shelves are starting to fill up with fine waters, each claiming to be better and “purer” than the other. Gargi Gupta dips into what’s available.
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Mineral water, natural mineral water, spring water, sparkling water, flavoured water, enhanced water...there’s a dizzying variety of water available on shop shelves these days.
To start off, there are the Aquafinas and Kinleys and Bisleris, brands of packaged mineral water. Moving up the price ladder, there are the “natural mineral waters” — “pure”, unprocessed and bottled at source, as per the rules of the Bureau of Indian Standards. The desi ones, “Bisleri Mountain Water” and “Qua” to name two, come in the range of Rs 40 a litre, while the foreign ones, Evian mainly, retail for more than double that. Then, of course, you have the sparkling waters, Perrier (Rs 140 for 750 ml), available at select super markets in the metro and A cities, in addition to a few Italian brands like St Pellegrino and Aqua Panna served at five-star hotels and luxe nightclubs.
As for flavoured or enhanced waters, that’s one category you won’t find much choice here. Delhi’s DS Group has had the Catch brand of flavoured “spring” water in six flavours for some time now, but there are a few new players jockeying to get into the space. Bisleri will be starting a test-market of around eight varieties of flavoured waters early next year. Around the same time the Narang Group, the distributor for Evian and Perrier in India, will launch Qua Plus, in around six variants, vitamin and green tea extract being two.
The globe-trotting Indian and his exposure to international lifestyle products is clearly what fuelled the thirst for the “enhanced” waters. But that’s old hat now. Rahul Narang, CEO of the Narang Group, speaks of another trend driving consumers today. “Health and natural-ness are the two things driving our target consumers, who are moving away from juices and carbonated drinks. Why even in the US, Coca Cola last month launched Glaceau vitamin-water zero, a zero-calorie variant.” Concurs Anjana Ghosh, director, Bisleri International, “The market is ready now, as people are looking at alternatives to juices.”
Health, of course, is the major platform on which these fine waters seek a market, allied to which is the promise of “purity”. Then there is the romance of their origins.
Perrier, for example, sources from the Vergeze springs in the Gard region of southern France, in use as a spa since Roman times. Evian, too, comes from France, from Évian-les-Bains on the southern shore of Lake Geneva. Aqua Panna, a favourite of the initiates, has its source 3,700 feet high up in the Apennine Mountains in Tuscany, Italy.
Among the Indian brands, Himalayan lays claim to an underground aquifer located in the Shivalik Mountains, while Mulshi Springs, an upcoming brand of “natural spring” water, says it sources from a spring in the Western Ghats near Pune.
However, fine waters have yet to take off in India the way, say, watches or perfumes, have. Even the five stars here, including the ones that claim to be at the cutting-edge of international hospitality trends, don’t have a water menu now, although some like the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi and The Leela, Mumbai did have one a few years ago. (The best you will get at the latter is the limited edition Evian, packed in bottles designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier).
The primary impediment here seems to be government regulations. “We used to stock brands like St Pellegrino and Apollinaris earlier,” says Debjeet Banerjee, assistant director, food and beverage, at The Park, Delhi. “But then there was a notification that all mineral water needed to be in crystal clear bottles. That disqualified brands like Perrier [distinguished by its green squat bottle]. Now Perrier has changed its packaging, and the colour is much lighter.”
But the water-marketeers haven’t lost hope. Narang quotes figures of consumption — 50-60 million litres of packaged water, compared to two billion litres in the developed world — to bolster his optimism. “It’s a huge market of 40 million consumers spread across 125 cities. Our sales have been growing at 40 per cent year on year.”
Drink to that!