Jelly for the belly Sukk is the drink and the Clever Jelly Company the creator — there's the beginning of why Tata Global Beverages' new health drink stands out from the crowd

The background When you're hungry — especially when you're hungry — eat and drink healthy, say the wise and the wizened. Tata Global Beverages (TGB), smart by disposition and young of age, certainly believes that to be true, which explains its vision of delivering 'good for you' drinks to a market that sees the healthy option as extremely desirable.   Company: Tata Global Beverages Innovation: Jelly drink health drink Taking this vision to the task of creating a healthy offering was what got TGB thinking about stirring up the soft drinks segment industry in the United Kingdom. That led to the idea of fashioning something completely new and different, even changing the way consumers perceive the beverages category.   TGB understood that consumers tend to grab fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate when they are hungry. So why not give them something distinct, and healthy to boot, a mini snack, if you will? This drink-snack could be more than useful for those in-between periods that separate lunch and tea, when the stomach is rumbling and the pangs are particularly demanding. The table was ready for Sukk, not soft drink or chocolate or fruit, but healthy and filling and fulfilling.   The innovation A TGB team comprising Andrew Dobson, Avgi Tsotsou, Krishna Shanbhog, Nick Firrell, Don Ecford, Barry Jansen, Rudiger Wolf and Sunil Kumar, pulled in from different corners of the company, worked over a period of six months to bring Sukk to market shelves. That's a short time for such a product to come so far, but the team was quick to grasp the new drink's potential.   Sukk is a low-calorie jelly drink from a marketing entity that TGB crafted for this venture, the Clever Jelly Company. The drink contains fruit juice, vitamins, green tea and added fibre and comes in two flavours: lemon and kiwi.   Launched in the United Kingdom in April 2010, each 180-gram pouch of Sukk has six grams of fibre and more than its share of vitamins B and C, and it rests light at just 83 calories.   TGB sees the drink as perfect for people on the go, more so for the young. The development of the drink was driven by consumers and their needs. Once these had been ascertained, the TGB team developed prototype products to test and these were well-accepted.   The payoff A year since its launch, Sukk has been a hit in the British market, particularly in the 18-24 age group, precisely the band of consumers TGB had set its sights on when putting the drink together.   "People who email us on our website say they like it and want to buy it in a supermarket near them," says a member of the team that developed the drink. "We have got social media to play a vital role in spreading the word on Sukk."   Jelly drinks are a big deal in Japan, but hardly get a look-in elsewhere in the global market. That may be about to change, in Britain at least, as Sukk makes its mark.