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Sankha Biswas, CEO, Nutridor, talks about his top priorities and how he steered the company in the right direction when faced with the impact of Covid-19
What are the top priorities that you want to tackle for Nutridor?
Nutridor leverages the best of science, innovation and product expertise to provide families with a solid foundation for their health. Keeping our vision in mind, we continue to explore healthy offerings and dairy benefits for consumers. Our research and development team applies science and expertise to create products that combine great taste with healthy benefits. Our top priorities remain to continue innovating in order to better our product offering within the dairy and beverages segment.
How would you analyse the impact the dairy industry is feeling from the current pandemic?
We are a new entrant in the Middle East market, but armed with over 30 years of experience in the industries of Africa and South East Asia, we were prepared to tackle major hurdles. During the pandemic, we followed the basic principles of employee safety while still maintaining product availability in the markets. Nutridor relies on the rich experience provided by its parent company — TGI Group.
How did Covid-19 impact your business? What lessons did you learn that helped you respond quickly to the Coronavirus pandemic?
Since we are a new entrant to the region, we were better prepared than most of the competitors as we were able to provide products through our experienced supply chain expertise. During any major calamities, the food industry becomes especially important and since we are in the long-life categories, our products provide a better food security solution than the fresh ones. The basic lesson paramount for our industry is maintaining employee safety, product quality and availability to serve our loyal consumers at the time of need. Covid-19 definitely tested that important part of our business which we believe, has steered fairly well.
What would you rate as your company’s biggest achievement?
Our company is young albeit with a rich experience. We celebrate every achievement with the same gusto as we learn from missed opportunities. Our biggest achievement is the ever-growing number of satisfied consumers. With its dairy brand Abevia, Nutridor operates on its diversified portfolio and resilient product offering coupled with price-ladder variety across all socio-economic segments. Extensive and entrenched route to market with product innovation at its core, takes Abevia towards the healthy consumer minds. The new healthy food and lifestyle choices of millennials, market research, and consumer feedback data guide us to invest in product innovation, brand marketing, and social media campaigns towards consumer value addition.
What technology does Nutridor use to keep up with the ever-evolving food industry?
Nutridor is leveraging the best of science and product expertise to provide families with a solid foundation for their health. R&D being in our core, technology deployment has been our habit, and we continuously outperform our own set of goals in the food and dairy industry. Our endeavour in implementing updated dairy innovation and technology has prompted heavy investment in the field. Collaboration, and knowledge development with improvement programmes are in place as a key pillar of our strategy.
What are the challenges that you face in terms of market penetration and competition?
We have great products with the excellent price-ladder offering. Nutridor only uses high-quality ingredients sourced from Europe and New Zealand, we are here to stay and in no rush when it comes market penetration. We are steady on target in reaching our consumers through our retail and wholesale partners. I think the challenging situation is over and we are presently on a solid growth path.
What are your expectations for the year ahead?
We will continue on our journey in 2021 with the same enthusiasm. We firmly believe that the coronavirus vaccines will help the market bounce back next year. We are prepared to seize tomorrow’s opportunities and can build on the right portfolio of products and brands to serve our consumers in a balanced array of geographies. With our consumers’ constant support, we will continue to generate profitable and sustainable growth.
