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Parle Products, the market leader in biscuits, has quietly entered Britannia Industries’ turf of cakes and rusks with its own offerings, priced on par with the latter’s products.
“We have pitted our cakes and rusks against Britannia with matching prices. Apart from Britannia, most players in the cakes category are local manufacturers such as Monginis,” said Pravin Kulkarni, GM, Marketing, Parle.
Estimating the cakes category at ₹500 crore with 20 per cent growth rate, Parle plans to ride its new offerings on the same distribution network as its biscuits, which reach out to 56 lakh outlets across the country.
Biscuit share“We are still the overall market leader in biscuits with a 38 per cent value share, while Britannia is trailing at 35 per cent,” claimed Kulkarni.
Since growth in the mass categories such as glucose biscuit is stagnant,, competition has also been brewing in the cookie segment between both players.
While Parle has an edge in the mass segment, Britannia’s has been intensifying its hold in the premium space.
Britannia has recently extended its glucose brand of Tiger into mass cookie products, while it continues to explore more premium cookies in its health portfolio under Nutrichoice.
“We are all set to take on the mass cookie segment,” said Ali Harris Shere, Director Marketing, Britannia Industries.
Parle, too, has launched its Simply Good digestive cookies in the premium health category .
“In the past five months, we have launched four new cookie offerings under brands Hide & Seek and Milano. We are also enhancing our distribution by 10-15 per cent at the premium-end,” added Kulkarni.
Incidentally, Parle has made a late entry into the health segment compared with Britannia, which has been busy extending its Nutrichoice portfolio with premium offerings and spending heavily on the digital media to promote its brand.
To counter this, Parle has made a plan. “We have been focusing on chocolate cookies at the premium segment, but now, we have planned more products in the premium health segment,” added Kulkarni.
The health segment in biscuits “is still small at ₹250 crore, but is growing at 25 per cent. We will look at more sub segments in this category like Britannia has done with variants like mutigrain”, he added.
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