The latest marketing tool developed on behalf of the French Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries under which Sopexa is founded, is targeted at the growing Indian market. ‘The application lets consumers discover main grape types, browse French wines by region, colour, body and price and also provides a quick, handy guide for food and wine pairings’, says Loic Denneulin, Country Manager, Sopexa India. “We developed the App exclusively for the Indian market at the moment-other Sopexa branches are exploring ways of doing specifically for that country,’ he added.
While explaining the concept to delWine, Loic said that their Indian office worked at the concept, contents and the philosophy and engaged the services of local programmers to develop the App which is expected to evolve as proper feedback is received from the user and more wines enter the database.
“Our main aim was to make UncorkFrance as relevant to the Indian consumers as possible. The food-wine pairings have an option for spicy food. It is important for us that we stick to the wines available in India and we have done just that in our data base,” says Loic.
UncorkFrance also draws on social media like Facebook and Twitter to popularize French wines, and gives users the option of recommending the ones they taste on those sites. In addition, wine connoisseurs can create wish lists of their favourite wines, write reviews and stay updated on upcoming events and promotions.
To ensure that this application is accessible to everyone, UncorkFrance is free and can be downloaded from iTunes at no cost. The iPhone user can click iTunes and Search for UncorkFrance (or even Uncork France) when he would be directed to download the App. To make it country-specific ‘Sopexa has sought the help of several wine importers; Aspri Spirits, FineWinesnMore, Munjral brothers and UB group have already responded with the list of their most popular French wine labels’, adds Loic. As the database grows, other importers will also be able to add their French wine labels.
Nandita Sirohi, the Marketing Project Manager, Sopexa says that there are 54 wines listed already in the data base from these four importers. As more of them send the information about their wines, these will be loaded online by the Sopexa admin without any delay, explains Nandita. ‘We are awaiting information from importers like Brindco, Mohan Bros, Hema, Sonarys and Global Tax Free and several others to whom we have requested for the relevant information,’ she says. Nandita also emphasizes the ease in working the App- she has been testing it on her iPad for over a month comfortably. She says the App is particularly helpful to the new drinkers who do not need to research too much and just want to have fun drinking wine.
UncorkFrance will thus provide a platform to gauge user patterns in wine consumption, measure the popularity of various wines, and forecast future trends for the Indian market. It will also provide a platform to the importers, existing and new, to promote French wines in their portfolio when they are entered in the data base and more and more consumers start using the free service. You may contact their Marketing Project Manager, Nandita Sirohi for any query or assistance.
It is a great opportunity for Indian importers to get enlisted for an excellent marketing tool being provided to them with the compliments of Sopexa which has become very perky of late in India.
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