Consumers May Not See the Supply Chain - But They Taste It”: Peeyush Rungta on Building Rungta Tea the Right Way
In Short
Peeyush Rungta shares the story behind building Rungta Tea, highlighting the importance of supply chain management, quality sourcing, consistency and delivering a memorable tea experience to consumers.
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“Consumers May Not See the Supply Chain - But They Taste It”: Peeyush Rungta on Building Rungta Tea the Right Way
About Peeyush Rungta
Peeyush Rungta heads the Marketing & GTM operations for Rungta Tea Private Limited. In his role, Peeyush has been responsible for driving the growth of the brand in the north and east of India through brand marketing and go-to-market strategies. The strategy adopted by Peeyush is founded on his strong belief that in the FMCG segment, especially tea, the product is the strategy with taste and quality at the center of all brand activities. He has been instrumental in the company’s depth-oriented approach to growth in regional markets.
About RungtaTea
Rungta Tea Private Limited, founded in 2001 and having its headquarters in New Delhi, is responsible for producing and distributing various blends of packet tea in the regions of North and East India. Some of the products produced by the company include Real Gold Select, Real Gold Classic, Real Gold, Real Taste, Real Taste Elaichi, Real Taste Masala, Rungta’s Roz, and Dhamaka. The current geographical area of operation of the company includes West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Delhi NCR. visit www.rungtatea.in
Q1. Rungta Tea operates in one of India’s most competitive FMCG categories. What has been the most important lesson in building a brand that consumers keep coming back to?
Perhaps the most crucial thing to learn was the most basic one. You cannot market a bad product into success. In tea products, all operations revolve around everyday habits and flavor. When you are a consumer of your product everyday, that purchase is basically made on instinctive sensory perceptions. Any failure to live up to those perceptions even once might not lead to complaints but loss of customers. Therefore, before we began worrying about visibility and reach, the first thing we worked on was perfecting the blend, the source, and the consistency of each batch. Repeated purchases have proven to be among the best measures of customer satisfaction in this category.
Q2. Rungta Tea has taken a very deliberate regional approach rather than chasing pan-India scale early on. What is the thinking behind that?
This is because of the pragmatic appreciation for the reality of tea markets in India. Taste perceptions differ greatly depending upon geographical location. What an individual in Bihar would consider to be the perfect cup of tea would differ greatly from the perception of an individual residing in Rajasthan. As such, we chose to focus on depth rather than breadth. We put in our efforts in building ourselves in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and West Bengal first before considering any kind of expansion beyond these regions. Geographic strength should never be an impediment to ambitious goals. An enterprise which has managed to earn true loyalty in a select few geographic locations is always in a far better position than the company that merely has a nominal presence all across the nation.
Q3. You have spoken about the gap between scaling from zero to one versus one to ten. What does that gap actually look like in practice for an FMCG brand?
Going from zero to one, the question is all about product-market fit. Getting the combination right, identifying the customer who will buy it more than once, setting up the distribution channels. Going from one to ten, the question is about operational excellence, and that is where a lot of brands falter. Growth brings to the fore all of the weaknesses in the operation. Weaknesses in logistics, weaknesses in consistency of quality, weaknesses in capability. A lot of brands grow rapidly, and then realize that they are unable to sustain the quality that gave them that growth. With regards to us, the fact that Siliguri is one of the leading tea producing regions in India helps our case. On top of that, we have made sure that we have stringent quality controls at several checkpoints.
Q4. How does Rungta Tea compete in a market where national players have advertising budgets that regional brands simply cannot match?
The emphasis here is on the contents of the cup. In the market segments we are catering to, Rungta Tea gets identified by the quality and taste of its products and that has been the differentiating factor we have tried to create over the years. What we are trying to achieve is a taste superiority as well as quality consistency in every batch that we deliver. Marketing is a crucial part of any brand development process and it creates awareness, trial, and purchase behavior, and we recognize the power of national brands when it comes to marketing. The strategy that we adopt is to make good use of our marketing budget and undertake marketing activities that give us a positive return.
Q5. What does leadership mean to you in the context of building a brand like Rungta Tea?
That’s thinking about long-term sustainability versus short-term results. Building sustainable brands is not about bursts of momentum. It’s about consistency and discipline and delivering high-quality performance and doing the right things, rather than cutting corners, as well as leading in such a way that more listening takes place than talking. The most valuable insights that we have received did not emerge during strategy sessions. They came out of conversations with consumers and retailers, with people who are close to the markets. Leadership, to me, is about enabling these insights to emerge and being implemented.
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