Facebook helps Capital Foods to scale up noodles sales

A growing reach of popular social networking websites such as 'FaceBook' has been effectively used by FMCG player Capital Foods to push up noodles and soup sales over the last six months.

The company, which is an emerging player in the country's consumer market, has seen a 30 per cent growth over the last six months in its revenues from the sale of food items after it ran an advertising campaign on Facebook, its Chairman and Managing Director Ajay Gupta said.

"Advertisement campaigns on the social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter is the new marketing strategy these days. We have seen a 30 per cent rise in our revenues in the last six months after we launched the campaign for our Ching's noodles and soups on Facebook," Gupta told PTI here.

The Mumbai-based firm, which clocked a turnover of Rs 210 crore in the last financial year, expects to achieve a total turnover of Rs 300 crore in the current fiscal from its operations in both domestic and foreign market, Gupta said.

The company, which makes instant noodles, soups and sauces under Ching's Secret, and Smith and Jones brands, has targeted a monthly sales growth of five per cent through its campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, he said.

"We have crossed one lakh followers on Facebook...Other leading FMCG brands have failed even to touch 30,000 so far," Gupta said, adding that Ching's Secret Facebook community is part of its advertisement strategy to make the brand popular globally.

The company is eyeing a 20 per cent share of the Rs 1,000-crore packaged noodles segment in the domestic market over the next two years on the back of online advertising campaigns.

"We are using the social media for crowd sourcing and to track what are the next flavours to launch. This is a fundamental and paradigm shift in the marketing philosophy," he said.

Over the last 10 months, Capital Food's instant noodles category has grown by 75 per cent to Rs 44 crore and is set to achieve a 20 per cent market share over the next two years, he said.

The firm has four manufacturing units across the country and has a total employee-strength of around 1,100