The personal care brand, MCaffeine has firmed up plans to launch new products, execute B2B tie-ups, and boost its exports. A report:
Gone are days wherein consumers looked at the brand name as the biggest criterion for using body care or beauty products. Today they are increasingly becoming aware of the ingredients that go into the making of such products, and are preferring those that suit their individual tastes and requirements. Manufacturers too are becoming more focused on the ingredients and have started giving more important to marketing the product ingredients, while talking about the product.
MCaffeine, which claims to be India’s first personal care brand with a focus on caffeine-oriented products, has embarked on a major business expansion spree, covering new product launches, B2B tie-ups and growing its domestic as well as export market. With these plans in place, whose is currently worth ₹ 17 crore, hopes to achieve a top line of ₹ 70 crore.
The brand, which offers ‘caffeinated’ products in the areas of hair care, skin care, and body care, plans to launch 30 new products by December 2019 end – adding to its current number of 20, informs MCaffeine’s Founder & CEO, Tarun Sharma, in an interview with the online media, indiaretailing.com. “Presently, we are in the process of developing 15 new products which will be launched in the market by May 2019. The launch of the remaining 15 new products will be equally distributed till December 2019. Among these new launches, the maximum number will be of face care products, followed by hair care and then body care products,” Sharma elaborates.
In line with its growth plans, the company is also exploring the B2B channel option, and is looking forward to tying up a number of salons and spas, and other relevant entities. According to Sharma, MCaffeine’s body scrub offerings have been received well and have also generated interest from some of the leading salon chains in Mumbai. He states, “It will be a learning experience for us, because the offering which becomes successful at the salons can also be incorporated as a consumer product and vice versa.”
The retail market option
Another expansion initiative on the agenda is entering the retail market. Since the company was launched in 2016, it has sold its product only on online eCommerce platforms, such as Amazon, Flipkart, Nykaa, and PayTM, among others, in addition to its own website – www.mcaffeine.com
However, entering the retail will only happen after the company is satisfied with the available data that suggests that the time is right for venturing into retail. Buoyed by its online experience, the company as a brand works on data strongly and in this context, it intends have more data engineers than brand managers, explains Sharma in the interview. “As we presently only have online sales, we are exposed to humongous data which we can use to our advantage. Our whole philosophy in retail would be to let our online initiatives help retail initiatives, and vice versa in the future.”
Talking about expanding the export market, Sharma informs that one of the foremost objectives of the company is to position MCaffeine as an aspiring brand from India in the world beauty and body care products market. According to him, currently about 22 percent of the MCaffeine’s online traffic comes from outside India. “If you do an online Search, for a few keywords we rank first in USA, because our content quality is rich. We also have a strong following in the European and UK markets. We believe India itself is a much bigger market till we make an encouraging ₹ 100-150 crore on topline annually.”
In the near future, MCaffeine intends to expand its coffee and chocolate based product line to a much bigger scale, and that will have more caffeine-based products as its strength. “We feel this is where we will be enhancing our volume business with these niche products,” Sharma points out.
The caffeine story
MCaffeine claims to be a research-driven, socially conscious consumer products company, and has served more than 100,000 customers in just about a year after it was founded by Tarun Sharma and his partner Vikas Lachhwani, in 2016. It is known for making grooming and body care products that are permeated with caffeine.
Before launching MCaffeine, the partners had briefly dabbled in the salon business, and their experience therein made them aware of the importance of caffeine in body care. This also gave birth to the idea of manufacturing and starting a business revolving around products with caffeine infused in them.
Sharma elaborates, “Our research showed that caffeine is used as an ingredient in all the MNCs and FMCG products but nobody was developing a brand around it; maybe they thought it was not that important. Our exclusive research on caffeine showed that the product is fast gaining prominence as a popular choice in the today’s emerging life style. Be it outlets like Café Coffee Day, Starbucks or Red Bull, we saw the youth was going for it. This is where the idea of making beauty products based on caffeine came to us because we realized this ingredient actually makes the cosmetic products healthier and more effective.”
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