Even during the Ice Cream Congress and Expo this September, industry peers didn’t realise the Chona family was literally freezing terms of their sale to South Korean giant Lotte Confectionary at eye-popping valuations. But within two months came that announcement, sending the entire trade into a tizzy. Late November, Lotte scooped up Havmor, India’s seventh largest ice cream brand, for Rs 1,020 crore in an all-cash deal, more importantly paying a multiple in excess of 2.5 times its 2016-17 turnover of Rs 400 crore. Lotte’s foray, say officials in the know, is part of a bigger ice cream play across south Asia via strategic acquisitions. Their seriousness can be easily gauged from their yearlong negotiations with the Chonas of Ahmedabad and the aggressive offer that trumped deep-pocketed peers Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and possibly even Nestle. The $1.5-billion domestic ice cream industry is now serious business, with popular homegrown brands that are still largely family-led showing up on the big boys’ radar.
In Ahmedabad, just like the Chonas, the Gandhis of Vadilal Industries are also on verge of exit, with a sale process underway. City old-timers rue the two family-run businesses — integral to both the Gujarati entrepreneurial spirit and sweet tooth — that thrived since pre-Independence will soon change hands, albeit for different reasons. Things aren’t that different in the financial capital either. “For years, we had taken a stand of not diluting our stake. But now, we are private equity-ready,” says Srinivas Kamath, secondgeneration entrepreneur. According to Kamath, daily sale is about 2 lakh scoops of Natural’s in half a dozen states, with annual sales topping Rs.140 crore last fiscal. Interestingly, his father R.S. Kamath opened the first store at Juhu in 1984 on Valentine’s Day more as an afterthought to selling paav-bhaji. The elder Kamath is responsible for introducing new fruit flavours. He’s planted various saplings on the grounds of the company office in Kandivali, Mumbai, which he treats as a sort of personal laboratory. For the Kamaths, repositioning Natural’s was becoming a necessity to woo millennials. They convinced their father to go for a pictorial mnemonic like an inverted ‘A’ with an ice cream scoop on top to increase brand recall. The green coloured font also went with their ‘natural’ philosophy. With the widest range of fruits ice cream in the world, the brand has gone international. After all, if food is familial, why can’t ice creams be too?

(Source: ET Bureau, December 12, 2017)