Hershey India MD, Herjit Bhalla Interview | Storyboard | CNBC TV18

Welcome back, you're watching Storyboard. Hershey's India has released its first ever India TVC for its iconic drop-shaped chocolates, Hershey's Kisses, which was launched in India some time back. Storyboard's Farah caught up with Hershey India's MD Paulo to discuss the company's brand and marketing strategy and plans to build dominance in the competitive premium chocolate market.

Let's start by talking a little bit about Hershey's in India. You've had two major launches this year, the first obviously being Kisses and then being SoFit protein cookies. What has the customer response so far been to both these products?

Well Farah, to begin with, it's been a very very exciting year for us at Hershey India. In October we brought the iconic globally loved Hershey's Kisses into India and the response has been absolutely fantastic.

Any indication as far as how these products are performing today? If you could throw some numbers at us.

Well, the way we would evaluate the performance would be basis internally set KPIs, and like I mentioned, currently both of them are delivering ahead of plan across all our target KPIs for this year.

So you've just recently launched your very first television campaign for Hershey's Kisses which features Tara Sharma. Tell us a little bit about how that entire campaign has come about.

What the TVC really is trying to do is enabling these love moments on our day-to-day basis. Consumers look out for ways to express their affection and some of these ways are just even beyond words.

How is that TVC going to pan out in terms of how would you expand this campaign across your platforms? Is this a 360-degree campaign? And if you could also give us a sense on what kind of marketing budgets do you have for Kisses today in India?

Well, I like to say that Hershey's Kisses is probably our biggest launch from the Hershey's portfolio in the last many years. We have built a robust marketing campaign that encompasses TV, digital, in-store activations, and most importantly there's going to be really strong in-store presence that we are going to be driving with this launch.

Although these are SKUs, how will you look at expanding the Kisses line in India? What can we expect in terms of new variants and new SKUs?

We've currently come to market with three variants: the classic milk variant, a creamy rich milk with almond variant, and a very unique Hershey flavor called Cookies 'n' Creme. Right now it's early stages of the launch and we're focusing on building these three variants in the market. But work is already on to look at the next step, and as and when we believe it's appropriate, we will be bringing more variants or more SKUs into the market for sure.

What is so unique about the Indian consumer palette? What have you been observing and are you looking at customizing the Hershey's palette to suit very distinct Indian tastes? Because the idea is obviously to grab a larger segment of the premium market and there's strong competition there from the likes of Mondelez and even now companies like Amul who have entered this segment with very premium offerings.

The chocolate market in India, especially in urban India, is at 1.2 billion dollars and is growing at 11%, so it's a huge market with a lot of opportunity for a differentiated product to grow. Coming to the consumer, the Indian consumer is becoming a lot more discerning. What they look for is a very clear differentiated quality product coming to them at a value, and that's what they appreciate and that's what Hershey's is all about.

What is the larger objective in India in terms of garnering a largest part of the whole market? Are there some hit targets that you could share with us? Because both the segments you've entered, the biscuit category and the chocolate category, these are heavily infiltrated markets with very strong established entrenched players. So what is it going to look like?

If I go back to our journey a bit, we entered the Indian market with Hershey's chocolate syrup about 10 years ago, and now you would find it in a large number of households in the country. Over two years ago we entered two new categories with Hershey's chocolate spreads and Hershey's milkshakes. These were immediately embraced by our consumers, making us number two and number three in these categories. So the Hershey's brand has really established itself in the Indian market and is a leading player in almost every segment that we play in. Similarly, SoFit is a brand that really owns the soy protein proposition in the country, is a clear market leader, and has been doing really really well. In the last two months we've entered much bigger and more competitive and intense categories, and our focus is to build ourselves in these categories in the coming year. That's where our energy and investments are going to be targeted.

Currently Kisses has been launched only in the southern market because some earlier news reports talked about how the infrastructure there is more well-developed and it's a large chocolate-eating market accounting for almost a third of the consumption in the country. When do you plan to take this to other parts of the country, and what would it take in terms of you as a company helping get that infrastructure in place?

Hershey's presence in the South is strong. We have actually gone this way in our earlier launch as well, and we believe this to be a winning formula, which is why we decided to go into the southern parts of the country first. Having said that, our other chocolate brand, Brookside, is already national, so infrastructure from a cold chain perspective is definitely now up and running. It's really not about the infrastructure, it's more about establishing ourselves well in the southern markets and then we should be looking at going national.

So, News18 India has launched a new TV campaign that marks the channel's leadership in the primetime band. What is this new campaign all about? Let's take a look.

You want to communicate that our channel News18 India has become the country's leading channel in the primetime band of 6:00 to 11:00 in the evening. But the problem is that over the last two years, various media brands, whether in television, online, or print, have advertised their leadership through a certain format of screaming headlines and graphs. The media planner or anybody else who receives these messages is a bit tired of this claim and counterclaim, and over time these messages are just not cutting through. So we decided to use humor and entertainment value to cut through the clutter. What you have is a very interesting commercial where a young man who's been grilled by a set of cops says, 'Look, I was at home watching News18 India,' to which they dismiss that. And suddenly their super boss comes on a walkie-talkie: 'Oh shut up you idiots, he must be right, the whole country watches the channel in the evening.' So just a funny, interesting way to get through the message.

Moving on, Bonn Beta Biscuits has established itself as the Sobisco biscuit over the past few years, but the brand in their latest campaign is taking this journey one step further by fostering progressive parenting in their campaign 'No More Excuses.' This brand is taking real-life insights when children resort to creative excuses to avoid eating anything that could be healthy. Let's take a look.

With that is a wrap on Storyboard this week, but before I take my leave, here is a look at what's in store in next week's episode. We have all the memorable conversations that we have had in the past one year. Hope you are looking forward to this one. Goodbye and here is wishing you a Merry Christmas.