Building a resonating consumer brand and making inroads into rural India

With active interventions over the past decade, we have been able to establish a robust consumer steel brand that achieves top-of-the-mind recall at the consumer level. Products such as ‘JSW Vishwas’ (GI corrugated steel), ‘JSW Colouron+’ (roofing sheets), ‘JSW Everglow’ (colour-coated steel) and ‘JSW Neosteel’ (TMT bars) have become synonymous with their respective applications and enjoy respectable market share in their specific segments. In fact, over 49% of our retail sales can be attributed to our branded products.

The recent addition to our portfolio, JSW Platina, is a continuous annealed tin plate product with higher product uniformity that enables high-speed can manufacturers to achieve higher productivity by reducing the rejection rates. This, in turn, has a direct bearing on the scale, efficiency and thereby profitability of their business. JSW Steel is the first among its peers to introduce the continuous annealing technology for making tin plate products in India, and our products serve as a viable and sustainable alternative to plastic product packaging.

Our branded products, among others, are retailed through our franchise stores called JSW Shoppe. Rolled out nearly 13 years ago, JSW Shoppe has played a key role in pioneering organised steel retailing in India, especially in the semi-urban and rural areas. Every JSW Shoppe showcases the JSW product range and bundles various services that consumers seek as part of steel applications.

To make quality products accessible in rural India, we have launched JSW Shoppe Connect Rural so that consumers can buy superior quality JSW Steel products through these branded stores. In the first year, we have appointed 150+ branded stores in rural India.

With a dedicated B2C channel, we strive to achieve a lasting customer connect, including with influencers such as construction professionals in the value chain. Towards this, we have launched several branding and marketing initiatives, including a dedicated training programme for fabricators titled ‘JSW Eklavya’, where we conducted practical training of two days for over 1,000+ fabricators.

We also launched a loyalty programme called JSW Privilege Club for our influencer segment with over 5,300+ members enrolled. Advertisements were rolled out via television commercials, out-of-home media and inflight magazines, along with uniform product branding. These were further augmented with regular influencer meets and engagement with the customers using festival memorabilia. We have also doubled up our engagement on the digital front, which has further enhanced the brand’s overall visibility.

We launched 'JSW Chala Gaon Ki Aur', an industry-first initiative of educating rural consumers and driving steel consumption in rural India. Through this initiative, we have taken our plant to the people by showcasing our plant, process, products and technology through a unique Virtual Reality (VR) film.

JSW Steel has signed up Indian cricketer Rishabh Pant as its brand ambassador to promote our leading brands JSW Neosteel TMT Bars and JSW Colouron+ colour-coated roofing sheets. The association will help in creating consumer awareness for our brands by connecting with the youth and our target audience who follow cricket passionately.