The Sehgals: Spicing up the beverage space
The Sehgals created a brand out of a jeera masala drink. The next-gen is taking Jeeru pan-India
Rajeev Sehgal (extreme right) with daughters Vishaka (extreme left) and Ankita, and son Dishank. Competition from multinationals does not worry the family
Image: Arpit Jain for Forbes India
Ankita Sehgal is candid about her disastrous professional debut in 2013. The eldest daughter of Rajeev Sehgal, the first generation entrepreneur who started an apple juice-based fizzy masala drink Jeeru in 2008, initially wanted to become a print journalist. Joining the family business was not even a remote possibility for the 24-year-old, who didn’t find Jeeru cool as a brand name. What took the fizz out of her determination to become a scribe, though, was a ‘reality check’ by her father. An incisive question—how many women occupy top positions in print journalism—turned out to be an eye-opener. Joining dad and his world of jeera masala drinks made more sense.
In April, when Ankita joined the family-owned Xotik Frujus, a sultry Mumbai and a pint-sized office welcomed her. “The office space was so tiny that barely six people could fit into it,” she recalls. Conducting sales meetings with 30 to 40 people was a tough task. The business too was of modest scale—some ₹10-12 crore—largely unorganised, and had its own share of the blues. Galvanising a sales team to sell Jeeru, and making a brand out of it was not easy. A jeera masala drink was an alien product for modern retail stores, and the product lacked swag.
The young entrepreneur persisted. Attending office every day for a couple of hours was giving her a good hang of the business. Growth in confidence—which stemmed from a successful, and modest, incentive programme rolled out for the sales team, which included daily grocery items such as sugar and cooking oil—made her bold enough to make daring moves. And she dared big time quite early in her stint by inking a ‘costly’ deal with one of the big modern retail chains. Though the idea was to find a shelf for Jeeru and take it to the right place to grab eyeballs and sales, it did prove costly. “My first deal in modern retail was the most disastrous one,” she recalls.
What helped Ankita bounce back was the way her father handled the entire issue. “He didn’t make it look like a failure,” she says. He portrayed it as Jeeru’s first valiant move to make inroads into modern retail. Within two years, she points out, Jeeru was contributing over 11 percent of beverage sales for Future Retail. “My dad always gave us a free hand and the courage to make mistakes and learn,” she says. A year after Ankita joined the business, her younger sister Vishaka followed suit, and handled the general trade. Brother Dishank was the last one to join and diversified the business by launching Xotik cafes.
Sehgal’s confidence in his children has paid off. From undertaking sales force automation to roping in marketing professionals, from charting out aggressive growth plans to fanning out across the country, and from ending ‘jugaad’ marketing and earmarking a decent amount for marketing and sales, the Sehgals have made a brand out of a commodity. While the organised market for jeera masala drink stands at ₹700 crore, the Sehgals claim to be the biggest player. Xotik Frujus gets over 80 percent of revenue from flagship Jeeru which comes in six stock keeping units (SKUs) ranging from ₹10 to ₹90.
