INTERIM REPORT
This report is submitted to Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Bengaluru in partial
fulfilment of the course “Summer Internship Programme” for the award of the degree of
Master of Business Administration for the year 2018-2020.
SUBMITTED BY
STUDENT’S NAME: Ravish Chhabra
PRN: 18020841125
UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF
Dr. Biranchi Narayan Swar
SYMBIOSIS INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT,
BENGALURU
95/1 & 95/2, Electronic City Phase-1, Hosur Road, Bengaluru – 560100
COMPANY NAME AND ADDRESS:
Pentagon Tower 1, Slip Road to Tower-3/4, Magarpatta City,
Hadapsar, Pune, Maharashtra 411028
1
Title of the Project: Exploring Institutional channel for Juice Category in Pune City
PROGRESS REPORT
INTRODUCTION
I started with gaining understanding of ITC vast product lines and its sales and distribution network
for its categories.
Then I moved on to, exploring the Institutional channel such as Corporate offices, HORECA, Schools
and Colleges, Railways along with identifying challenges for B Natural Juice.
Thereafter, I started focusing my efforts towards corporate offices, schools, HORECA and college
canteens as essentially Juice being an inherently premium category and mainly Institutions like
railway and bus stops may not give us the business lift vs the investment needed.
Furthermore, to find out more insights I made separate questionnaires for end users, intermediary
buyers and multi - utility suppliers to figure out the Awareness, Usage and attitude studies of the
customer.
Following are the key processes that are already completed:
Till now, I have interacted with all the ITC Dealers as well as our major competitor’s wholesale
dealers and spoken to ASM and AE of Real and Tropicana so as to understand the credit, markdown
and Incentive structure for them as well.
Moving forward, I have identified the key challenges, Overall Performance and outlook of Pune
Branch, Dealer Performance and Outlook. I have done channel mapping wherein I have Identified
current channel gaps, Channel Performance issues and Manpower gaps.
2
Also, for the past 3 Quarters, I have identified SKU details and Outlet wise details which variants are
working and in which segment to see if the downward trend is applicable in which all segments. The
main Motive was to find who was buying in Quarter 1 that wasn’t buying in Quarter 2.
Besides that, I have done the Competitive analysis of the major players in terms of their Incentive
structure, Market share and Market potential.
Also, after the findings on the billed outlets and non-billed outlets for the past 3 Quarters - segment
wise, it helped me to draw out which Institutions require better representation in the Pune City.
Having done the GAP Analysis for different Institutions based on Shelf space as well as sales volume,
I have been able to find out the potential and coverage of different Institutions which eventually
helped me identify the leads for my pilot test. Also, the Incentive structure which I have been able to
devise after analyzing the market will help me to Introduce it for Institutional channel of the Pune
City.
Post all the analysis done for the product, I was asked to make a Revenue model as in for the
challenges identified through the data, what will be the cost involved to revive the product from the
De-growth being faced in the Institutional channel, to which I have shared a model wherein I
calculated the cost involved to hire a salesperson, credit given to wholesale dealers, free sampling
cost for the end users, through all this combined will be able to make out revenues which will be
higher than their targets for the month.
However, after planning out the roadmap for my pilot test, I am supposed to activate the sales in the
Institutional parties and in the end figure out the number of outlets increase, visibility increased and
the revenue generated after 3 weeks of pilot test.
3
Key Learnings:
Types of Channel in the FMCG Industry
During the 1st month of my Internship, I learnt about the types of channels in the Industry such as
Bakery channel, Chemist channel, Institutional channel, Rurban, Modern Trade, General Trade and E-
commerce.
Competitor Benchmarking
It is important to understand what the competitors are doing to get the advantage. As a brand, it is
really important that the concept is unique and feasible. The brand should note the positives from
others and try to build upon the loopholes or the gaps to gain the competitive advantage. For
competitive benchmarking, I visited the wholesale dealers point, met salespersons and Area executives
of the competitors in order to find out the market share, their potential and coverage.
Seasonality in the Beverages Industry
Juice as a product commands a seasonal demand during the summer season and during the festive
occasions in the months of November and December.
This makes it hard to forecast a quarter on quarter growth.
The method followed to forecast sales is by taking into account all the macro and micro factors
concerning the Juice industry and fixing a tentative growth rate on the last year’s sales for a particular
month.
Extensively Well-Organized Distribution Network
ITC Limited has 13 distributors for the entire Pune Market.
These distributors cater to the areas which are allocated by the company considering a number of
factors such as proximity, location of the warehouse of the distributor etc.
Any order that is placed by the retailers with the Area Executives (AE) or the Distributor Salesman
(DSM) is processed, dispatched and delivered within 24 hours.
4
Challenges Faced:
• Low Brand Salience - Also due to unavailability
• Brand Promise (Commitments) i.e. As per Retailer merchandising inputs which were promised
were not delivered Ex: RA(Counters)
• RFA Process – Till now, claims of December has been examined
• Product - centric and Availability
• Cheaper supply from Modern Trade (“Market”)
• Without credit, cannot rotate the cash cycle as WD’s money stuck in the market, hence affects
our primary sale as well as secondary sale.
• Sales training for Institutional DS
• High Opportunity and low encashment
