Prakash Maharjan Executive Director Shakti Foods Pvt Ltd

--By Sujan Dhungana

Shakti Foods Pvt Ltd, registered as a dairy company in 2010, penetrated the domestic market with the vision to be the best in the market. The then market seemed challenging with other booming companies in the sector. It was thus, a tough task for them. Keeping this in view, the company started initially by producing ice-cream under the brand name ‘Martin’. To get international recognition, the company adopted production of ice-creams through automatic plant, using modern machineries. To hit the psyche of consumers the company tagged its product as ‘Freeze Your Moments’. 

Prakash Maharjan, the Executive Director of the company believes that production through automatic plant was necessary to meet the market demands. He says, “Consumers at that period were already conscious about their health, and to give our consumers a healthy product was our chief challenge,” hence “Adoption of automatic plant in production played a great role to acquire brand loyalty from our customers.”

With the growing competition the company started focusing on understanding the need of its consumers and also the weaknesses of the entire dairy sector. The major problem was the price being higher, it was popular only among the elites. Thus, “We thought of coming with a product which could easily be accessible to general people,” said Maharjan. 

Mass production was another challenge that the company faced. The market of ice cream was small, resulting in limited production. Thus, the company started mass production and tried distributing the product to heterogeneous population of the country. The company started producing 10,000 litres of ice-cream per shift. In the beginning, the marketing was focused basically on the densely populated cities.

However, the branding process was not so easy. “It was really a challenging job to brand a product in such a market where a number of other brands existed,” says Maharjan. He adds “We did not focus on big advertisements and campaigns in media; however, we directly approached our potential customers.” The company started offering free samples to the consumers—in department stores, exhibitions and different schools. Furthermore, the company made arrangements for the people to visit the factory where they could see the manufacturing process. Maharjan also says that Nepali customers have become choosy with time. Keeping this in mind, the company produced different flavours of ice-cream in order to fulfill the quest of its consumers. 

Taking every hurdle as an opportunity, the company today has established itself as one of the competitive players of the industry. Started with 20 direct employees initially, today the company has 30 employees working in Kathmandu-based factory. Martin has around 400 retailers scattered all over the country, today. Maharjan says “We occupy around 10 per cent of the market share,” adding that the company is trying to extend the market in different districts and also trying to target the mass through different musical programmes. On being asked about the future plans, Maharjan said that the company is planning to produce other dairy products in the near future.