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Vinod Mathew

MUMBAI, Feb. 15

BACK in 1977, it is said that Trikaya launched Thums Up in India just as the beverage brand launched the fortunes of the advertising agency. The agency went through a series of metamorphoses, the first coming a decade later when it decided to go `Grey' in 1987-88. By 2001, the makeover was complete as the name Trikaya was dropped altogether and it became Grey Worldwide.

The brand Trikaya, far from being a nostalgic memory of the days before the advent of the multinationals into Indian advertising, is alive and kicking today. What is more, it has taken on a colourful montage as if to distance itself from anything remotely grey.

The new avatar, Trikaya Agriculture, a pet project of the late Ravi Gupta, the founder of Trikaya Advertising, now boasts of a daily output ranging between 15 and 20 tonnes. Made up mainly of `exotic' vegetables from its farm land which fetches up some 30 km short of Pune on the new express highway connecting Mumbai, the company is growing at an annual rate of 30 per cent and has touched a sales of Rs 2 crore where the profit margin is upwards of 40 per cent.

The idea behind the venture has been to keep away from vegetables commonly grown in the country and concentrate on a basket of some 45 exotic vegetables which are normally found in Europe. Grown under controlled temperature environs, these include the leader in the pack, iceberg lettuce whose daily output is 800 kg -1 tonne. The other prominent products in the Trikaya stable include broccoli, Chinese cabbage, yellow sweet corn, asparagus and zucchini. The herbal line-up include basil, chives, spearmint while the flower range comprises dahlias, amaryllis and cosmos.

"The hard part of the business is the concept selling and the name of the game is to produce round the year. This keeps the spread wide so that one product crashing in the market does not hurt immensely. Curiously, I had told my dad in 1994 when the agri business was bleeding, to cut losses and put the money in the stock market. He was convinced that one day we would be sending one truck-load of vegetables to Mumbai. No one is laughing any longer as we are doing more, but it has been a hard grind," says Mr Samar Gupta, Managing Director, Trikaya Agriculture Pvt Ltd.

Not many who have been to the 110-acre Trikaya farm here with a 230-strong workforce is surprised that despite being the leading supplier to the 12 McDonald's outlets in Mumbai, Mr Gupta looks for over 95 per cent of his revenue elsewhere. Catering to over a dozen five-star hotels in Mumbai and three air kitchens, Trikaya has three branded outlets in the city and nearly 50 `affluent' vegetable vendors catering to the upmarket side of the city waiting for his trucks to reach Mumbai every day.

Clearly, the horizons are widening as cruise ships, which earlier used pick up their vegetable requirements from Dubai and Singapore, have begun shopping from Trikaya. Thus, when a Korean liner docks in Mumbai, Trikaya would be doing brisk business, selling half a tonne of Chinese cabbage and pak choy or an assortment of herbs and sprouts such as thyme and tarragon, cressida and fenugreek.

"It is not that there is no competition in exotic vegetables. In a bid to spread our risk, Trikaya is getting into fruits, again not the common ones. We have started farming fruits such as longan, avocado, carambola and jam in some 65 acres of land in two locations. The fruits that we identify are the popular ones in the leading cities of US, Europe and the Far East," adds Mr Gupta.

It is one thing to bring fruits popular the world over to India but a totally different ball game to try and sell Indian perishables abroad. Trikaya found that out a couple of seasons ago when its export of snow peas to Perth hit a road block, one that has kept the company from further overseas sorties. The Indian produce was forced out of the Australian market as the Chinese began selling at an equivalent of Rs 120 per kg as against the contracted price of Rs 180 per kg.

Meanwhile, it has not been all hunky dory for the Indian vegetable and fruit growers, especially of the corporate kind, of late. Many a big ticket venture growing strawberry, mushroom and even roses has been hard pressed to keep afloat.

For Trikaya, the solution lies in finding a sustainable mix of products. As the erstwhile advertising label found out when a number of local farmers began growing baby corn last year which forced Trikaya to reduce its daily produce from 100 kg to 10 kg. It is this vital ingredient called flexibility of product portfolio that has kept the middlemen at bay, perhaps in the advertising days of yore and now in the case of a perishable product line.

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It's agri-biz and not ads that keeps Trikaya alive

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