Probiotics is a flourishing $14-billion market globally. In India, this market is gathering pace.

Wondering what this is all about? Well, the battlefield is the human gut, which is home to more than 400 species of bacteria that form the ‘gut flora’, bacterial lining around the borders of the human intestine that facilitates smooth digestion or doesn’t.

The human body consists of over 100 trillion bacteria. So every time one suffers from digestive diseases such as diarrhoea, indigestion, food poisoning, or stomach ulcers, it can be easily concluded that the bad have won over the good microscopic creatures. And the solution? More and stronger good bacteria.

How? Simple. Through the consumption of live bacteria, or probiotics, in other words, that not only help fight the multiplication of bad bacteria, but also reduces their numbers and augments the digestive immune system.

In fact, probiotics is a flourishing $14-billion market globally, where international FMCG giants such as Nestle, Danone, Yakult, Muller and several smaller companies retail fermented dairy products such as yoghurt, cheese and buttermilk that are supplemented with certain specific strains of live cultures (Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium), which when consumed in specific quantities daily, works their magic.

The scene is no different here in India. The probiotics market, though at a very nascent stage, is practically on the boil, with almost four FMCG giants in the category.

Amul was the first to foray into the category with its probiotic ice creams Prolife. Then, it was the turn of Swiss multinational Nestle with the launch of its probiotic yoghurt NesVita. This was followed by Mother Dairy (b-Activ Dahi) and Yakult Danone India Pvt Ltd (Yakult) announcing their entry into the category.

Mayank Trivedi, General Manager, Nestle India, says: “Extensive consumer research into daily problems of consumers revealed that due to sedentary lifestyles, dietary habits and the pressure and stress of modern, fast paced life, consumers daily face niggling problems with their digestion. We realised that they need daily consumption solutions to overcome this. Probiotics, when used scientifically, can provide an excellent solution. Nestle has extensive science and R&D expertise to make such a product and dahi (yoghurt) is an ideal carrier for probiotics or good bacteria. D ahi, which is already considered good for digestion in India, is the most appropriate product to introduce probiotics. Hence, Nestle married its international science and R&D expertise with local consumer understanding to launch th e first probiotic dahi in the market.”

In fact, Nestle, having recently declared dairy as its key area of growth, is all set to introduce probiotics in its other dairy products as well. “We plan to extend the benefits of probiotics to several other products in the yoghurts category, new and old,” said Trivedi.

The total packaged curd market in India is estimated at 40,000-60,000 tonnes per annum, of which Nestle has a 30 per cent market share.

Amul, on the other hand, having tasted success in the probiotics category with its ice cream in February earlier this year, is already in the process of test-marketing pouched lassi in Gujarat and some parts of Maharashtra, with pla ns of introducing it in the other parts of the country soon.

“Where Amul scores is that we are present in many dairy categories to which pro-biotic elements can be easily extended when compared to our competition,” says Jayen S. Mehta, Assistant General Manager, Amul. The other advantage for the company is its formidable distribution hold.

Meanwhile, there is a marketing and pricing war of sorts brewing between Nestle and Mother Dairy, since both have forayed into the probiotics category through yoghurts.

While Nestle’s NesVita is priced at Rs 15 for a 200 gm pack and Rs 25 for a 400 gm tub, the home-grown Mother Dairy has strategically priced its probiotic offering at just a rupee lesser, at Rs 14 and Rs 24 for 200 gm and 400 gm respectively. The Indian company’s b-Activ is also retailed through a smaller 90 gm pack at Rs 6, a size that its rival Nestle is not present in.

On the marketing front, both companies seem to have locked horns, focusing on on-ground activities such as outdoor advertising on billboards, at bus stops and through pamphlets educating potential customers about the advantages of consuming probiotic yoghurt everyday.

Both have initiated the roll-out of their products from the Capital, and will eventually expand their reach to the other metros and Tier 1 cities.

Then there Yakult Danone India Pvt Ltd (YDIPL), a 50:50 joint venture between Japan’s Yakult Honsha and The French- Danone Group, with its offering Yakult, a probiotic drink made from fermented milk, lactobacillus and some sugar. But here’s some trivia: Yakult is available in only 65 ml packs, but boasts of having 6.5 billion of the live bacteria in each pack, probably much more than any other company’s current offering.

The company’s management is very optimistic about the product and plans to launch it by the end of 2007, having fully set up its manufacturing facility at Rai in Haryana.

Says Kiyoshi Oike, Managing Director, YDIPL, “Both Yakult and Danone are globally known names in the probiotics category. Yakult alone sells 29 billion bottles of probiotic drinks every day across 29 countries. And with more and more Indian people getting exposed to the Western life, there is already an understanding of our products here.”

The company initially plans to start off by selling around one lakh bottles per day in India, aiming to eventually touch daily sales of a million. Though YDIPL will not develop any India-specific product, it will roll out the 20-odd probiotic products under ‘Yakult Honsha’ and 30 -products from the Danone stable under the YDIPL banner in the country.

What about pricing? Well, YDIPL says that though its product is available for around Rs 20 for a 65ml bottle in the UK, Australia and Argentina, it will be affordably priced in India.

All players feel probiotics is the next big thing in the FMCG domain. Though none of them were ready to give an estimate of the possible size of the probitoic market in India, they said it would experience exponential growth in the years to come. They were gung-ho about the emergence of modern retail trade, which would make product promotion easier than it is today.

However, a word of caution – all products that claim to be probiotic may not necessarily be so.

According to experts, only those products have at least 10 million good bacteria from either the lactobacillus or bifidobacterium strains that have the capacity to reach the gut alive are genuine. So watch out, and do read the product labels.

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