NEW DELHI: It’s a war memorial turned battleground. The biggest battle for market share in the country’s Rs 1,500-crore ice-cream business takes place at India Gate , the historic monument that commemorates 90,000 soldiers who lost their lives in World War I.Delhi’s India Gate is the country’s single largest point for selling ice-cream, closely followed by Chennai’s Marina Beach, says ice-cream companies. “India Gate is where we create brand awareness,” Kapil Agarwal, CEO of RJ Corp’s Cream Bell said. “It attracts a large number of tourists from all places and lets us reach consumer from markets where we are not present,” he added.It is here that Hindustan Unilever’s Kwality Walls, NDDB’s Mother Dairy, Vadilal and Cream Bell track fast-moving flavours, strategise against competition and phase out slow-moving flavours in real time in the battle of brands. Their foot soldiers: more than 200 skinny, sun-tanned pushcart vendors who hang around the less-than-one square kilometer park mostly till the wee hours.From March and till the Monsoon rains hit the capital in June end or July, each pushcart here does a business of about Rs 2,000 every day. That translates into a daily total business of Rs 4 lakh. All by selling sticks and cones and cups ranging from Rs 5 to Rs 50. “Our pushcart is our biggest marketing tool there,” says Rajesh Gandhi, MD of the Ahmedabad-based Vadilal Industries , which has close to 40 pushcarts at India Gate.A spokesman of HUL, which sells Cornetto, Paddlepop and Selection sub-brands under the Kwality Walls umbrella, said strong presence in high consumption points such as India Gate and Marina Beach was integral to the firm’s strategy to increase availability and visibility. All big brands, including Amul and Hatsun Agro’s Arun ice-cream that are not there at India Gate, agree that the monument designed Sir Edward Lutyens at one end of the Raj Path is the largest ice-cream selling point in the country followed by Marina Beach.But there are no such huge selling spots in cities like Mumbai and Bangalore, which have more of a parlour culture. That means spending comparatively more on developing the market because pushcart vendors don’t need much marketing backing.“We create consumer pull through advertising and promotions in traditional media but there is no need to do so at India Gate,” says Vadilal’s Gandhi. So do marketers use it as a testing ground? No! Everybody pushes tried and tested products as the sale is so high. Also, most vendors are not smart enough to lure consumers to try out something new.After all, the bigger brand here is the place. Savouring ice-cream at India Gate is a regular summer activity for Delhiites, from slum dwellers to national leaders. This place accounts for almost 11% of overall ice-cream sales in the capital, one of the largest ice-cream markets.The national market leader, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation’s Amul, has already applied for the corporation’s approval to place pushcarts at India Gate, says R S Sodhi, chief general manager at GCMMF. “We definitely want a presence there,” he adds.