The Background

Aries Agro Ltd is India’s respected supplier of quality plant nutrition solutions, with a comprehensive range of micronutrients. Aries has pioneered the concept of Agricultural Chelates in India and provides solutions to increase crop yield without hampering the soil fertility. Aries has a decade-long existence in the nutrient market and successfully reached out to more than 75 lakhs farmers across India through its range of products. Aries has not only provided cost-effective farming solutions to farmers for raising crop productivity but also created alternative to chemical fertilizers. As an IPO proposition, Aries mainly had plans to expand its production capacities by setting up plants at various locations in order to cater to wider markets. Aries was a book-building issue and had proposed moderate fund raising programme to push up its growth plans in the plant nutrition segment.

As a pre IPO cursoring activity, positioning and promoting Aries Agro as a Micro-Nutrient company and not as a fertilizer company was the main communication task. Creating a buzz about Aries Agro and the relatively unknown industry it was operating was an onset for a sustained media campaigning to unlock the potential of the micronutrient sector. To create a reliable and efficient communication channel between Aries and its keys stakeholders was a key initiative.

Considering the low awareness about Aries and the micronutrient industry, a communication strategy was devised to create awareness about both, the company and the industry. With a view to achieve this, an extensive research was conducted on the micronutrient sector and Prana came out with its own findings in terms of identifying media values attached to each such finding. Prana built an exhaustive talking point to highlight this potential sector and its contribution in the Agrarian country, which the media was hardly aware about. Prana arranged a nationwide media familiarization programme to communicate the message of ‘Micronutrient’ to the audience. Thrust was laid on making ‘Micronutrient’ as an acceptable USP to the media. Opportunities were spotted and created in the media and Aries Agro with its more than three decades of experience was highlighted as a perception leader and the major beneficiary of this sector.

Key Achievements in Plan Implementation

Aries happened to be a successful IPO on the bourses. Aries became a thought leader in the media and analyst fraternity. As a result of the communication strategy, with inquisitiveness of media to write on micronutrients and media accepting micronutrients as an emerging business. Aries today consistently invites media appearances through one-to-one interviews or trend stories.

Overall Impact

OAlso the IPO was sold as a good proposition by highlighting the company’s wide distribution network, experienced management, diversification plans and massive capacity expansion plans of the company and being the only listed focused player in the high growth segment of micronutrients. We turned the promoters’ vast knowledge about the industry into a media opportunity and published the articles authored by the promoters.