Raja Varatharaju, Business Head – Personal Care, CavinKare, talks about the 30-year journey of brand Meera, the launch of Meera Music, strengthening the brand’s proposition among youngsters, and more As an ode to the 30-year journey of its brand Meera, FMCG major CavinKare has launched a new property Meera Music that aims to bring the younger generations closer to traditional music through Carnatic Fusion. According to Raja Varatharaju, Business Head – Personal Care, CavinKare, the property is in sync with brand Meera’s proposition and will strengthen its positioning among the younger audiences. “Meera as a brand has always believed in ‘goodness of tradition’ and offers them to the modern-day consumers in a modern format. Meera Music brings the goodness of traditional music to today’s younger generation. We believe this will take the engagement with our consumers to the next level,” says Varatharaju. The brand believes that the female artists who do renditions and fusions of Carnatic music are the ‘modern day Meeras’ as they are the bridges that make traditional music relevant today. While young female artists will be a significant part of Meera Music, the brand will have diversity within the artists they choose to represent Meera Music. The brand has also emphasised that it will take a multilingual approach to the property and the property will not be restricted to any region, state, language or nationality as they scale it. In fact, the maiden song ‘Jagadodharana’ is in Telugu.

  The brand journey After a successful 30-year-long journey of brand Meera in the business, Varatharaju describes it as a power brand for CavinKare. The brand, from very early stages, has been guided by its proposition of bringing ‘goodness of tradition’ in a convenient form to the younger generation. The proposition has remained a constant throughout its 30-year journey. Shares Vartharaju, “The brand will continue to stand for the same ethos, but depending on what the market wants, we will adapt the proposition for those product categories and relaunch and launch the existing categories.” For brand Meera, the South of India is the biggest market. The brand will continue to focus on the South and then has plans to take this brand beyond South as well. The expansion is not an immediate plan but a work in progress. Meera Music will help build brand salience for Meera by Cavinkare in terms of the percentage of how much a consumer associates the brand with its proposition of ‘goodness of tradition’. He adds, “We are looking at two different things; one is sales and the other is about the associations and the strength of the associations. Sales is a short-term goal and can be achieved via advertisements. For the long haul, if a person relates the brand with the ‘goodness of tradition’, the consumer would respond to the brand in other categories as well. That is one important metric that we will look at - how consumers relate and adopt not just in one category, but in multiple categories.” Leading through clear segmentation Being a major FMCG player, especially in the hair care category, what works for Cavinkare is the distinct segmentation among its offerings for different consumer pain points. Meera stands for strong hair accompanied by its proposition rooted in tradition. Another brand Karthika is meant to help consumers grow long hair. Nile stands for anti-hair fall being a natural, mild shampoo that takes care of hair fall and breakage. Chic a protein solution that stands for beauty as it is focused on shiny beautiful hair. Elaborating on this strategy behind building multiple successful brands, Varatharaju says “Every brand is defined differently. They really stand for a particular price point, particular customer and a particular value, that is how these brands are segmented. We have a strategy of focusing on the brands that we have rather than launching additional brands every quarter. We'll be going across categories with similar brands than going with many brands. That’s how we will follow and we will build these brands as power brands.”