Consumers face ‘no choice option’ at Tasmac

CHENNAI: S Dhamodhar, an IT employee transferred from Bengaluru to Chennai, was surprised to notice that the consumers, who wanted to purchase liquor, asked Tasmac salesmen to give ‘140’ and ‘170’ instead of asking the liquor brand.

Only after a few weeks, Dhamodhar realised that there was no choice for the consumers in Tamil Nadu to buy their favourite brand of liquor.

After several issues at the Tasmac liquor outlets, including MRP violations, the consumers were facing “no choice option” for the last few years, which was going unnoticed.

Accordingly, consumers do not get their brand of choice in the ordinary and medium range of liquors at the shops.

Currently, Tasmac, has a total of 553 brands of foreign spirits, beer, and wine products, that are being sold through 238 FL11 licensed retail outlets.

Accordingly, Indian-made foreign spirits, beer, and wine are procured by the corporation from 11 Indian-made foreign spirits manufacturing units, seven beer manufacturing units, and one winery.

A senior official from Tasmac, seeking anonymity, told DT Next that due to heavy competition between few distilleries, the consumer will not find a particular brand for a long.

“The Tasmac depot manager decides the inventory of the liquor shops according to the indents,” he added.

Echoing similar views S Prakash, who had worked in Bengaluru pointed out that he used to consume his brand of liquor regularly there, but now I am forced to change three brands,” he said.

Consumers in the city also regretted that they could not complain to Tasmac officials about the ‘peculiar brand issue” as there is no rule to penalise the company, which could not supply a particular brand regularly. Though there are more than 30 brands of beer available as per records, only very few brands were in shops.

“I had to travel about 10 km from Chennai to further north to get my brand of beer and that too for an additional Rs 25 above MRP,” L Jayakumar, a sales representative, said.