Date:11/04/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/04/11/stories/2003041101321700.htm

Business

Amway India's plans

By P. Vikram Reddy

HYDERABAD APRIL 10. Amway India, the Indian subsidiary of $5 billion Amway Corporation, has achieved 85 per cent indigenous manufacturing level, and has also commenced local manufacture of Nutrilite Protein powder at the facility of Sarvotham Care, its third party manufacturing partner near Hyderabad.

Along with these developments, the company has chalked out some aggressive growth plans in India, which includes a tie-up with one more contract manufacturer, the Chennai based Sai Mirra Pharaceuticals, which will manufacture five Nutrilite products in tablet and capsule forms.

Taking presspersons around the Sarvotham Care facility near here on Thursday, William S. Pinckney, Managing Director and CEO, Amway India, said the five Nutrilite products from the Chennai plant would be launched in the last quarter of this year. This includes Nutrilite Iron and Folic for women to be launched this month. Then a bar soap in its `persona' range is also slated for launch in June. It is targeting a 5-10 per cent growth this year.

In a deviation from its global strategy, Amway is planning to come out with an `India specific brand'. This will be a brand with a range of products developed specially for Indian market and which will be priced lower than the present range. "It will be a greenfield project. And we will start manufacture and sale simultaneously in India," he said, as against its strategy of marketing existing global products in India for two years, before manufacturing them here through third party manufacturing partners.

Mr. Pinckney said this could take up to one year. They will be tying up with existing local manufacturers in skincare, moisturisers, cleansers, footcreams and cleansing soaps.

Mr. Pinickney said the Indian Direct Selling Association (IDSA) submitted a `Draft Act' to the Government two years ago, but the Government feels the existing Acts, Sale of Goods Act, and Consumer Protection Act, provide sufficient safeguards. But the IDSA and Mr. Pinickney point out that more countries from the U.S. to Mexico have such regulation in place. The regulation, he points out, is in the interest of consumers and intended to protect them against `pyramids'. It is not for the protection of direct selling industry, he points out.