Home-grown ice cream brand Rollick, owned by Prestige Ice Creams Pvt Ltd, expects 30-35 per cent growth in sales in 2022 over the pre-Covid year of 2019, backed by a “strong summer” and steady rise in demand.
The company has associated with Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) as official partner for the upcoming IPL series.
According to Gaurav Khemani, Managing Director, Prestige Ice Creams, the last two years have been tough for the ice-cream industry with demand slowing down. However, sales are expected to witness a surge during the current year.
“In 2020, we were 50 per cent of our 2019 sales; but in 2021, we grew by nearly 60 per cent over our 2020 numbers. This was mainly because both in 2020 and 2021 we saw the peak summer months were hit by the Covid wave. Now during the current year, we are expecting 35 per cent growth over the 2019 levels,” Khemani told BusinessLine post the press conference on Monday.
The company aims to achieve sales of close to ₹150 crore by 2022-end.
Rollick, which has presence primarily across States in the eastern region including Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the north-eastern States and Bhutan, is looking to strengthen its presence in these markets.
The brand has established its presence in 100 new towns and villages in West Bengal over the last one year and is further looking to strengthen its foothold in the eastern region.
Retail sales and the wedding and catering segments account for nearly 90 per cent of the company’s total sales with the remaining coming from the institutional segment. The company has also been witnessing a steady traction in the demand for sale of ice-creams on the online channel.
Association with KKR
Following its association with KKR, Rollick has launched an ice-candy dedicated to Team KKR and T20 cricket. It is purple in colour, in line with the team’s jersey called Chatpata Powerplay, which will be a mix of sweet and tanginess (grape and tamarind). The product would be available by April-end across all retail outlets and Rollick parlours.
The brand also plans to integrate the KKR brand and its players’ images across different packaging of its high-selling SKUs from laminates to cones to cups.
“As a part of this association, Rollick looks forward to strengthen its market position among ice-cream consumers in eastern India. The T20 cricket season falls in summer when ice-cream consumption is very high and with the rights to leverage KKR’s strong fan-base in the market, the brand will launch the campaign #RollickingKKR,” he said.