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Purvita Chatterjee

"We never registered the Onjus brand and are not planning to do anything against any new company."

Mumbai , Sept. 29

ENTREPRENEURS beware! If you are not registered your brand or trademark, you may lose it to someone without your knowledge.

This is what actually happened to the Onjus brand of the Mumbai-based Enkay Texofood Industries. Sheer negligence in registering the rights of the Onjus brand by its erstwhile owners Enkay Texofood Industries Ltd has resulted in the brand being re-launched by a newly floated Mumbai-based company - Tunip Agro Pvt Ltd.

Onjus, one of the first packaged fruit juice brands in the country, has been missing from the market for a couple of years and its manufacturer has subsequently referred to BIFR and is under liquidation.

Mr Tulsi Goyal, Managing Director, Enkay Texofood Industries Ltd, told Business Line, "We never registered the Onjus brand and are not planning to do anything against any new company which wants to launch the brand. Our company has become a BIFR case and is already under liquidation."

Considering Enkay Texofood Industries is not interested in challenging the rights of the brand, industry observers feel that the company was never quite serious about its foods business. Mr Goyal candidly admits that things did go wrong primarily because of the loss incurred by the company in its textiles division due to the climbing prices of raw materials. A consequence of this was that cash flows from the foods business was channelled into the textiles business. This didn't go down well with the financial institutions and they decided against investing in the foods business, leading to a shutdown of both its divisions, he said.

Moreover, unlike in textiles where the sales were based on large credit terms, in foods it was advance payment, which took care of its dealings with its distributors. It was thus easy to divert these ready funds to its textile operations.

Meanwhile, Tunip Agro is all set to enter the juice market with the brand - Onjus, "a 100 per cent natural juice in a revolutionary manner". It has already advertised for C&F agents in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Professional C&F agents with big storage facilities, adequate infrastructure and a strong financial backing, have already been invited by the company.

According to officials at Tunip Agro, the Onjus brand has already been registered under the company name, which has been mainly floated for launching the Onjus brand once again in the market.

Enkay Texofood Industries made a foray into the foods business by exporting pulp to countries in Europe and North America in 1990, launched its own orange juice brand, Onjus, in 1997. The brand clocked a turnover of Rs 15 crore in its first year itself, and was a marketing success.

The re-entry of the Onjus brand through its new owners will challenge the brand to prove itself in the market all over again.

More Stories on : Brands | Foods & Food Processing

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