Horlicks

Horlicks is a health drink brand existing in India since decades. Horlicks holds 50% market share of milk beverage market of India that is around 2300 crore (source: The Nielsen Company). GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare is a proud owner of such a strong brand. The brand has created such a great entry barrier that other big players like Nestle and Dabur have got a hit.. Nestlé has stopped making Milo and new entrant Dabur India has decided to stay clear of Horlicks and pitch its Chyawan Junior against GSK Consumer Healthcare’s other beverage brand, Boost.

One of the important reasons of Horlicks domination since years is because of constant innovation not intems of product only but also marketing. GSK Consumer Healthcare has decided to use the brand to get into new categories. In the last few months, it has launched biscuits for children, a nutrition drink for women, an energy bar and chilled milk.

The crazy thing is that Nestle and Dabur fell into the trap of Horlicks. It is GSK who dictates terms, all these new categories always existed in the market and GSK identified the market gap and filled it with its new product line. GSK is fully utilizing the strong brand equity of Horlicks to promote its new products and now Horlicks is India’s 6^th trusted brand.

When marketers see saturation in the market, they have either two choices one expand the market second increase the usage of its existing products. As of now Horlicks is banking on the first strategy and that is very obvious Young kids would like to continue with Horlicks when they grow older.. As increasing the usage is very difficult. Again, five years ago, GSK Consumer Healthcare had reached out to pregnant and lactating mothers with Mother’s Horlicks; last year it came up with Women’s Horlicks catering for women across age groups.
There’s Horlicks Lite for the elderly who often have a sugar problem and for the youth there is Horlicks Nutribar

With Horlicks Nutribar, positioned on the twin planks of health and convenience, GSK Consumer Healthcare has leveraged the brand to venture into an entirely new product category — energy cereal bars. A strong brand, opens up doors to new variants and even new categories.

In 2003, the brand was revamped: It was made tastier and launched in two new flavours — vanilla and honey. The company had earlier launched a chocolate version to try and win over consumers in the North and West who typically prefer chocolate-flavoured drinks. Not just higher tonnage, the company does succeed in extracting a price from consumers. In January this year, for instance, prices were upped by about 5 per cent. But it has been seen that parents in India can spend to maximum limit on two things Child’s nutrition and education. Horlicks cover the first part.

Horlicks has used media mix to its full capacity to reach out to every customer be it TV, radio, Print, Point of sales etc. Now it seems the next big task and if it succeeds, Horlicks would become the biggest brand in India is to sell Horlicks in rural India and make every villager drink Horlicks Milk.