We don’t believe in gimmick marketing: Arjun Ranga, Cycle Pure Agarbathi

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India is considered to be one of the key incense-producing countries in the world. No prayer or religious and cultural ritual is complete without the burning of the fragrant incense stick or agarbatti. The earliest mention of incense has been found in the Vedas. Thus, the agarbatti has a rich history and legacy dating back thousands of years.

Cycle Pure Agarbathi has become India’s leading agarbatti manufacturer and one of the most popular brands with a lion’s share of the incense market. Launched in 1948, Cycle Pure Agarbathi is the flagship brand of NR Group, founded by N Ranga Rao, with a legacy of more than 75 years, offering aromatic incense sticks, and prayer materials.

Elaborating on the significance of the brand name ‘Cycle’, as part of this exclusive AG Talk interaction with Adgully, Arjun Ranga, Managing Director of Mysore-headquartered Cycle Pure Agarbathi, said, “In 1950, with the cycle, you could go anywhere, just like with prayer and just like with the agarbatti.”

While reflecting on the journey of Cycle Pure Agarbathi so far, Ranga shared, “The company was started by my grandfather in 1948. He was a very spiritual man, who immediately connected with agarbatti and how it is used in the product. Very early on he realized that to be competitive, you have to deliver quality to consumers and create your own fragrances.”

Continuing furthr, he said, “I’m a third-generation perfumer. My grandfather was a perfumer, and so are my father and uncle. Every fragrance that comes out of Cycle Pure Agarbathi has been created in-house. My mother takes care of the production. The formula for the fragrances is a closely held family secret. Every product is created with a lot of care for the consumers, who take the product.”

Further discussing the story behind the brand name, Ranga said, “In 1950 my grandfather realized that India had so many different consumers from different backgrounds, languages, dialects. He wanted a brand name and symbol that everybody would be able to understand, immaterial of their language or their background. So, he chose the name ‘Cycle’, because it is called a cycle in every language in India. And it was easy to understand, personifying hope and freedom. We wanted to make Cycle the best brand for everybody, no matter what they are in society. Just like what a cycle is – it is powered by one’s own will. Thus, a lot of philosophical value is added to the brand.”

Elaborating on how Cycle Pure Agarbathi is giving back to the society through its various CSR initiatives, he said, “Regarding CSR, I think my grandfather always believed that it is our solemn responsibility to give back to the society. Even before the word CSR was coined, we were doing a lot of charity. Today, we run a fully funded residential school for visually impaired girl children, from first standard to 10th standard. We run a skill development center that helps in upskilling women and helps them with job placements. Apart from that we do a lot of rural empowerment projects with agarbatti making and packaging as well.”

Delving into the marketing strategy of Cycle Pure Agarbathi and how it stands out from the competitors, Ranga said, “I think the biggest USP of Cycle Pure Agarbathi is that it is sustainable. We are the only zero carbon agarbatti manufacturer. There is almost no environmental impact of every product that we create. We have also become completely plastic-neutral, which means we upcycle every plastic that we put out on the market. So, that’s a very important differentiation for us. Secondly, all our fragrances are created in-house. We also give you a 100% end-to-end performance guarantee of the product. We have been there for 75 years and are the only first ISO company. We also have entire employee safety as a key aspect of our operations. Thus, we are certified, we are globally present and we also export to 75 countries. But most importantly, we care for the future generations. So, that’s what I think is one of the biggest differentiators of the company.”

Speaking on the communication strategy, he added, “We believe in delivering value with every product. We have a very complex communication strategy, which is a mix of digital, offline, online, and television. We carefully curate all the content that we put out. We ensure that consumers understand the product, and believe in it. We don’t believe in gimmick marketing. So, we only talk about what is good about us. We don’t put other brands down. That’s something that we believe is essential in the current day and age. So, most of our marketing campaigns are on consumers, surrounding delivering value to consumers, ensuring that visibility of the brand gives them a lot more compassion, a lot more understanding of where we come from.”

He further said, “The core of our communication has always been around prayer, spirituality, and well being, about health, wealth, and happiness, translating to the fact that everyone has a reason to pray. And with that, we talk about the purity of prayer with the ingredients that we use.”

Festive Plans

Elaborating on the festive season plans, Ranga highlighted the initiatives for the recently held Ganesh Mahotsav, and said, “I think Ganesh Chaturthi is a very unique festival. We have a fantastic product called Akhand Jyothi, which is a 6ft tall agarbatti. We tied up with hundreds of pandals this year, and we gave the Akhand Jyoti Agarbatti to be lit in these pandals, which gave fragrance for almost 48 hours. Thus, it was a very unique product at all the Ganapati pandals this year, where the devotees could come and enjoy the fragrance and also offer their prayers.”

Sharing about the sustainability initiatives of Cycle Pure Agarbathi, he said, “For us, sustainability is a very key aspect because it concerns the future generations. We believe most people pray for their well-being, and for the future. So, when a mother prays, she says, let my children’s future be bright. Therefore, it is our responsibility as a brand that delivers hope to ensure that the future generations have a good planet to live in. And hence, Cycle is embarking on creating recyclable packaging. All our packaging is more or less 100% recyclable. The materials that we use are generally recognized as safe. Almost all ingredients that we procure, we ensure that our value chain is offset of all carbon footprint. That’s the reason why we are a zero-carbon manufacturer as well.”

Speaking on the strategies that Cycle Pure Agarbatti employs to stay ahead of the competition, Ranga informed, “There is no great strategy. We are the market leaders. We create the trends in the market for our competitors to copy. We were the first ones to create three fragrances in one pack. Every competitor now copies that and makes their version of that. We were the first ones to create a Kaps Armani, which is an encapsulation of Dhuno. Everybody is copying that. We were the first ones to create a gift pack for the festivals, called All-in-One. All our competitors copy that as well. So for us, the only way we can continue to be ahead is to innovate continuously so that our competitors can then copy what we do!”

Cricket gameplan

Further commenting on how Cycle Pure Agarbathi is nurturing young cricket talent at the grassroots level, he said, “Cricket is an amazing sport in India. Cricket is almost like a religion and whenever cricket is happening, people pray and we want to be where prayer is present and more or less people are praying with Cycle. So, that’s the reason why we are connected to cricket. Now, to help young talent, we have a small franchise team in Mysore, called the Mysore Warriors. It’s a cricket team in the Karnataka T20 league. We have that team where we get youngsters to come and be part of the team and get that experience. But apart from that, we also nurture young sportsmen out of Mysore who require a helping hand. We support them with training or with equipment or with gear, or in case they want to go to tournaments. We also support budding talent in various other sports such as badminton, tennis, golf, etc.”

On the market share and ad spends of Cycle Pure Agarbathi in 2024, Ranga shared, “We are at about 15% of the organized market advertising budgets and are among the highest spenders in our category in terms of advertising.”

Speaking on the plans of Cycle Pure Agarbathi for H2 of 2024, he said, “H2 is where our festival season starts – from Ganesh Chaturthi all the way up till the Ayyappa season in the South is where the festivals are right through Durga Puja, Dussehra, Diwali. So, H2 is a crucial part for us, starting from September, and we typically see a bump up in sales because of the festivals in that period.”

Sharing his observations on how big the branded and unbranded incense sticks market in India is, Ranga noted, “There is no clear data available because the industry is so fragmented and localized. I would probably guess that around 70% is branded and about 30% is unbranded or lost in the industry.”

Digital push

Commenting on how Cycle Pure Agarbathi is leveraging AI, social media, and digital technology, he said, “On the manufacturing front, we have semi-automated a lot of our processes so that the quality, consistency, dependability improves. We are slowly automating some parts of the packaging as well to make it touch-free. But where we use a lot of AI is in consumer buying behaviour, and understanding purchasing patterns. We use AI in our social listening as well from the consumer feedback that we get on all the marketplaces and social media channels. We use AI in the front end and we are looking at automation and industry 2.0 for the manufacturing side of the business.”

Speaking about the success mantra for Cycle Pure Agarbathi and its rich legacy, Ranga said, “At the heart of our survival for all these years is that we care for our consumers. We constantly deliver value for money, keep surprising them with a lot of product innovations and ensure consistency in the offerings that we do. But in between all of that, the heart of the business is the people that we have in our company. Every employee works very hard and is dedicated to the same shared vision of delivering value to the consumer. We believe the consumer is God for us. And so taking care of them is our utmost important job for every one of us. That being said, I think India is a fabulous country. In the next 15-20 years, we will see so much development with 5G becoming a reality, with quantum computing, with data available at everybody's fingertips, and access to information will increase so much more. And we believe, as an ethical company, that is sustainable, that's doing the right thing every single time, and the future is bright for companies like ours who do business the right way.”

Watch the complete interview here :