Juice-based soft drinks market has potential to grow: Pandey

KOLKATA, Feb 13: The market for juice-based soft drinks in the country has the potential to grow in geometric progression, said Himanshu Pandey, MD Suru Foods and Beverages.
He said this at the launch of Yas juice-based soft drink at Kolkata on Friday. Suru Foods and Beverages, is the parent company of YAS.
Pandey said YAS will tap the market of juice-based soft-drinks not just in metros but also in India’s smaller towns and in the hinterland.
“The market for juice-based soft drinks has the potential to grow in geometric progression. And, YAS, whose name is the millennial version of an emphatic ‘Yes’, is the brand that will ride it by appealing to the youth who will make up most of our population in the future”, he claimed
The brand is the brainchild of IIMC-IIM alumnus Pandey, who quit his corporate career to start the state-of- the-art enterprise that will take his local community along on the road to employment and value creation. He has had stints in some of India’s premier companies in the media and entertainment sector such as Tata Sky, Airtel DTH and Group M.
With YAS, Pandey hopes to not only establish a pioneering FMCG brand, but also create ample organised employment in his hometown in East Champaran.
YAS will be one of many from the stable of the food- processing company, Suru Foods and Beverages Pvt Ltd, that Pandey has founded.
“While each of the YAS variants harks back to flavours we have loved growing up, and often found in the unorganised retail sector, their taste has been painstakingly fine-tuned by the core team,” he said.
Among its portfolio lies the one-of-a-kind drink called Panchratna, which fuses real beetroot extract with the savoury punch from pepper and a host of Indian spices to offer a drink like no other. It is at home whether consumed straight out of the bottle, mixed in cocktails or even when frozen as a popsicle.
YAS Shikanji is another variant championing the zesty local drink sold on carts on hot summer days.
Indian summers are nothing without their mangoes. YAS steps right up with no less than two mango variants Ripe, juicy mangoes get distilled in YAS Mango while tangy, sweet green mangoes refresh with every swig from YAS Aam Panna.
With the first manufacturing base in Bihar, it is only natural that YAS sports a litchi drink, which will delight the consumer with extracts from the very best yields of the fruit sourced right from Muzaffarpur.
YAS comes out of the modern, automated manufacturing plant in Areraj, Motihari, in East Champaran, a district in Bihar. (PTI)