With new brand identity, Weikfield Foods eyes 2.5x growth in revenue

Weikfield Foods, started in 1956, recently announced a comprehensive repositioning strategy with a new brand identity. The company is also planning to diversify its products offerings into tea segment, ready-to-eat and others as part of efforts to minimise revenue contractions.

Despite the pandemic, the company expects these initiatives would help to achieve its growth target of 2.5 times in revenue over the next 3 years. New products will account for 25 percent.

Weikfield has gone from strength to strength over the last six decades with its iconic portfolio consisting of custard, cornflour, baking powder and cocoa including its recent entries like pasta, falooda, sauces and cake mixes.

Dipy S Sachdeva, Chief Executive Officer, Weikfield Foods said the company has four brands in the portfolio – Weikfield the motherbrand, Chef’s Basket – a brand that it acquired last year, EcoValley – that focusses on products that are healthy, natural & fresh; and St. Dalfour – a fruit preserve brand imported from France, for which it has an exclusive distribution arrangement.

“We believe these brands haven’t been leveraged enough and we would rather leverage them better than adding more new brands in the portfolio. However, what we would do is innovate across product format, pack format, pricing structure to grow these brands,” said Sachdeva.

The company which was not very aggressive in terms of investment on the brand communication is now investing aggressively to build saliency in the consumer mind.

The company also invested in digitising its sales process with order taking process moving from pen and paper to mobile phone. For supplies, it started collaborating with e-distribution platforms like Udaan & Javis etc. and scaling up its ecommerce business to ensure its products are available.

Currently the company reaches more than 400 towns through a network of over 900 distributors. Primarily focussed on Weighted Coverage and today its direct coverage is around 60,000 stores while indirect coverage could be more than a lakh. The company intends to expand its direct coverage to 100,000 stores in the next 12 months.

Digital channels form a very important part of a company’s growth strategy. Ecommerce contribution doubled in the last 3 months. The company is putting together its plans to build a Direct-to-Consumer business in the next 9-12 months which would be completely digital.

On the impact of the pandemic, he said, over 40 per cent of the company’s workforce migrated and they have gone back home. The company is now working with local authorities to source and train local people to manage during this time of crisis, he added.

The current pandemic also impacted the supply chain, he said adding that for seamless distribution the company has decided to adopt alternate channels.

Besides supply and manufacturing, WeikField is also facing challenges in procuring raw materials for its products, however, the company is expecting things to become normal during this financial year, he added.