Mumbai-based beverage company Xotik Frujus (XFPL) announced the rebranding and repositioning for popular jeera brand Jeeru as ‘J.’ in an attempt to acquire a higher share of the ethnic beverage market in India.

The design philosophy of J. is one that represents the confident and colorful chaos of Gen Z and existing customers. The use of 6 various Indian colors in the product packaging, helps give the brand a modern lease of life when paired with clean and bold shapes and is 1st time done within the beverage category. The stark minimalism of form fights with a maximalist colour palette to ensure that heads turn wherever one sees the J. at shelves.

In order to attract the quintessential new young Indians who are ‘dil se desi’ but have the promise to be achievers at a global level, J. aims to break through the cluttered beverage market and change the paradigm. J. retaining the familiar beverage flavor has been conceptualized and elevated with the added goodness of apples and bottled with that bold, Indian attitude that is ready to take on tomorrow.

Anjana Ghosh, chief executive officer, Xotik Frujus, comments, “With J. we wish to completely reinvent the popular jeera masala drink with new age looks and an attitudinal connect with the global India Gen Z or young Indians. With changing consumer habits, experimenting attitude of the Indian consumers today, the new design and vibrant 6 colors are aimed at creating higher brand recall with a sharper identity amongst New India. Our consumer insight behind this positioning showcases hustling and ambition, empathy, digital nativity, self-expression and creativity being at the core of the youth of India today. These attributes have been instilled interestingly in our creative campaign and brand packaging covering myriad colors which will be seen 1st time for any beverage brand in India. The marketing campaign will include strong ­­digital led communications to on-ground activations driving trials for J. for the newest masala-soda on the block. Like Jeeru had attained leadership in the category, we hope that in its new avatar, J. will connect with consumers better.”

The essence of the design for J.

The design philosophy of J. is one that represents the confident and colourful chaos of Gen Z. The use of Indian colors, are given a modern lease of life when paired with clean and bold shapes. The stark minimalism of form fights with a maximalist color palette to ensure that heads turn wherever one sees the J. anywhere.

The new positioning as J.

Xotik is known for its innovative ethnic drinks with a twist of masala. New India is looking out for more beyond regular flavors like cola, lemon, and orange towards mixes and fusions of flavors and spices. The search is for something fresh and out of the box! Therefore, Xotik, keeping this in mind has created this ‘avante-grande’ experience to the new target audience with J. This is why this complete rebranding aims to make it an aspirational and trendy youthful drink and thus connects better with the youth in this season. This is a first-of-its-kind brand that has been named after a single letter; a deliberate decision against convention in true Gen Z fashion. Beyond barriers of language, space and place, J. is a deliberately abbreviated sound that is whole on its own while yet being the beginning of more to come.

An aggressive marketing push for J.

Xotik has formulated a year-long plan of various campaigns, trials and activities to create brand visibility and generate awareness for J. Aggressive OOH campaigns, print & other on-ground activations will bring forth new innovations and ethnic range of products using digital and social media activation as well as consumer engagement with brand collaborations to create high-value brand visibility and awareness. The company is expected to spend approx. 20 crore on various marketing activities.

Indian ethnic beverage category

The ethnic beverage market is targeted to be between 700-800crores. Along with this, Xotik is announcing a strategic roadmap ramping up their state-of-the-art production units, adding new flavors of both carbonated and non-carbonated drinks and aiming to target 780 towns to 3000 in tier 1, 2 and 3 cities by 2026. Added with new product repositioning they have identified multiple manufacturing units across West, East, North and South of India and aim to add 400 super stockists and 3000 distributors across India by the end of 2026. With new leadership, Xotik has planned for very aggressive growth and set a vision of becoming a 1000 cr company within the next 10 years. The aim is to achieve 50-60% Year on year growth for next 3 years and close at 500 cr by end of FY '26.