‘Shanti,’ WASA’s bottled water turns unprofitable

Poor marketing and management made WASA’s bottled water ‘Shanti’ unprofitable. WASA has been selling its bottled water ‘Shanti’ since 2006.
Profit remains elusive, although, WASA has been investing Tk five crore a fiscal year since 2006 on its bottled water project, Shaheda Islam, microbiologist of the bottled water plant told the New Age.
She said that WASA imported equipment worth nearly Tk 17 crore for the Shanti project.
She said that some of the machines went out of order, hampering production for three years.
It was in the backdrop of growing demand for bottled drinking water that WASA had set up a state-of-the-art automated plant at Mirpur.
But the plant with the capacity to produce 42,000 bottles of water per shift, now produces only 15,000 bottles of different sizes due to low demand, officials said.
The quality of water, extracted from 1,000 feet below the ground level and purified by six multimedia filters, is the best in the market, they said.
Dealers get a commission of Tk 2.10 selling a half-litre bottle of Shanti. But they get a commission of Tk 3.25 selling other brands of the same siz, the officials said.
Due to this reason, they said, there is low demand from the dealers for WASA’s bottled water ‘Shanti.’
The low profit margin, they said, does not encourage the dealers to promote the Shanti brand.
The price of a half-litre bottle of Shanti is Tk 9.00, a one-litre bottle is Tk 12, 1.5-litre bottle — Tk 16, 2-litre bottle — Tk 20, 5-litre bottle — Tk 33 and 20-litre jar — Tk 50, they said.
The prices are much lower than the other brands, they said.
They said that WASA engaged more than 20 distributors to market Shanti in the capital city.
WASA could not market Shanti in other areas of the country due to lack of distributors, they said.
A handful of government offices in Dhaka buy WASA’s bottled water, they said.
The plant manager RJM Rabiul Kaiser said the project incurred loss worth approximately Tk 30 lakh until December.
He said that WASA was planning to advertise Shanti in print and electronic media to strengthen marketing and popularize the brand.

Courtesy of NewAge