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| Nutrition + Fun = Britannia |
| Raghuvir Badrinath / New Delhi Jun 22, 2009, 00:52 IST |
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That’s the success formula of India’s leading bakery products company.
Zindagi Mein Life. That may be a hard-to-digest tag line, but that’s precisely what Britannia has been attempting to follow. The mantra of India’s leading bakery products firm is to continuously infuse more zindagi into its lifeline – the seven pillar brands, each of which does more than Rs 200 crore business.
The vigour in the company’s operations seems to have increased after two important events in the past couple of months — first, the Wadias bought out French foods major Groupe Danone’s stake in the company; and second, Britannia ended its joint venture with New Zealand-based Fonterra for the dairy business.
 Britannia Managing Director Vinita Bali, of course, doesn’t want to talk about the tumultuous relationship the company had with Danone as it’s strictly a shareholder issue. “It never affected the running of the business,” she says.
She could well be right as despite the past problems, Britannia controls a third of the Rs 8,000 crore biscuits market in India and the seven pillar brands — Tiger, Good Day, Marie, Treat, 50:50, Milk Bikis and Nutrichoice — have already become household names across the country.
The only thing it is seeking to do now is to keep pace with India’s fast evolving consumption patterns and needs. In keeping with the underlying theme that the company produces good food that is fun to eat, the company is offering products spanning across segments — right from a basic glucose biscuit to a wholesome wheat grain to a richer creamy chocolate biscuit.
 At the heart of the branding strategy is the belief that biscuits can also fulfill various other consumption needs to remain with the consumer throughout the day. Says Neeraj Chandra, VP & COO, Britannia: “We see biscuits as part of a much larger macro-snacking market with a lot of inter-linkages of points of consumption. So our view of the market is that every category interacts with several others… including within it.” For example, biscuits interact to some extent with snacks, to an extent with beverages and to some extent with chocolates.
Within biscuits also, classically people have looked at this market as glucose, cream, non-cream etc. But Britannia thinks otherwise. For example, five years ago, the market was largely glucose. While that still remains a large segment, the market has also evolved into more affluent forms of consumption. “The ratio of cream biscuits to glucose biscuits has changed dramatically in the last five years,” Chandra says.
This perhaps is the specific insight that has made Britannia morph its glucose-only brand ‘Tiger’ into a much larger brand by offering variety. The company has been in the glucose market since the past decade and has managed to garner around 17 per cent share in this high volume segment, lagging behind Parle’s share of around 65 per cent.
“Glucose is part of Tiger, but Tiger is more than glucose. We are leaders in all segments except glucose biscuits. It is the biggest turnover generator as volume is high. With Tiger we are looking at a broader canvas of kids’ nutrition, and glucose is a part of it. Under the Tiger brand, we are offering a range of other varieties including cream, banana flavour, fortified with iron and others. Glucose is a big chunk. It is growing but others are also showing good growth,” Chandra says.
But wanting to move away from a historical only-glucose offering, Britannia is also leveraging the fact that children want to have fun along with nutrition. “It is a combination of positioning as a brand which is more enjoyable and good for you. The reason is kids like variety in any kind of segment and that is our approach behind expanding the Tiger brand,” Chandra says.
The company is also constantly expanding its list of brands with a sharp focus. Example: Three years ago, broadly two to three brands were active — Goodday, Tiger and to an extent Marie. But the base has now been enlarged to seven powerful brands.
But some brand and marketing consultants wonder whether Britannia is spreading itself too thin. Says a consultant: “It’s a two-way sword and it depends on how well they are able to execute this strategy in the market place.”
But Chandra counters this by saying “For the past 12 quarters, we have been recording a 20 per cent compounded growth rate and it is a reasonable period. So far so good, but how it will pan out in the future, we do not know. But we are working to ensure growth.”
That explains why the company is not only expanding its biscuits range with variations, it is also parallelly widening its presence in the bread, rusks and cakes market too.
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