Parle, Amul most frequently bought labels across India in 2018: Report

Home-grown labels in biscuits and dairy top the charts, but global giants find their way into more categories and regions: Kantar

Parle and Amul were the most frequently bought labels across Indian households, chosen 5.3 and 3.9 billion times respectively in calendar year 2018. But while Indian consumers are sticking to local brands when it comes to food and dairy overall, as branded purchases become more common, global labels have a wider spread, according to the latest Brand Footprint report by Kantar. 

The report, which measures the number of households buying a brand and the frequency with which they are doing so, says that branded buys are increasing in more categories and global names are making their presence felt. 

The top 16 list for 2018 shows a wider spread of categories from soaps to shampoos, toothpastes, detergents, creams, tea and instant noodles, besides biscuits and dairy. And the preference for names from the house of multinationals was high in most cases. So, Clinic Plus (shampoos), Colgate (toothpaste), Wheel (detergent), Lifebuoy (soap), Maggi (instant noodle), Surf Excel (detergent) and Fair & Lovely (cream) were chosen between one and three billion times by Indian households in 2018. All these brands are manufactured and marketed by companies such as Hindustan Unilever (HUL), Colgate-Palmolive and Nestle India.

The only exception here is Tata, chosen 1.9 billion times in 2018, thanks to the recall it induces in tea especially in the south, where it has regional names such as Chakra Gold and Kanan Devan driving it, said Kantar. In detergents, on the other hand, price warrior Ghadi stuck out amid MNC rivals in the top 16.

The big loser in 2018 was Patanjali (Rank 20), as growth momentum slowed. It was not among the top-growing brands in terms of penetration, for the first time in three years according to the report.    

“At a broader level,” says K Ramakrishnan, GM and country head, S Asia at Kantar World Panel, “The top 50 list (for 2018) has brands such as Sunrise coffee and Lay’s chips from Nestle India and PepsiCo, which have marked their presence for the first time in the report. This has happened due to better distribution and marketing by these brands, pushing up frequency of purchase among households.” While Lays debuted the list at Rank 44 on the back of strong reach and penetration, Sunrise came in at 47 as more households opted for the product off store shelves.   

As the menace of counterfeit products has hit home, experts say, trust in brands from established companies has been increasing. In 2018, for instance, there were fewer “global” brands or labels from multinational companies that dropped their rankings versus the figure in 2017. It stood at four versus seven in 2017, pointing to the increased confidence in these names, Kantar said. The number of global brands losing penetration in 2018 was also lower than in 2017 (three versus five), indicating that these companies were also putting their money and might behind improving reach.

In the last few quarters, most companies including multinational players in FMCG have been working hard to grow direct distribution, both in urban and rural areas. This has come as they seek to reduce dependence on the wholesale channel, considered unorganised and lagging behind most other trade channels in terms of its application of best practices.

HUL, for instance, has a direct reach of over three million outlets, say analysts, which is nearly 38 per cent of its total retail reach of 8 million outlets. Companies such as Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser and Nestle have also been pushing direct reach aggressively in addition to home-grown players such as ITC, Dabur, Marico and Godrej Consumer. ITC’s direct reach is estimated to be over two million outlets, while Dabur’s is around 1.2 million outlets.