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Bakery company Britannia Industries will invest to fight the "regional competition" against small players and in e-commerce to become stronger in product categories like biscuits, rusk, cake, croissants and wafers. As part of its strategy, Britannia will have a "startup mentality" to compete with small players having influence in small pockets, said Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer Rakshit Hargave. "We are going to be fighting regional competition, we are going to be investing in e-commerce, yes, that will require more funds. We are committed to invest that. We believe that the opportunity for us to drive topline better is definitely there," said Hargave in an investors' call. He stressed that driving topline growth was critical to expanding Britannia's consumer base across its portfolio of brands, and the company would take a "pragmatic view" of balancing ambition with resources. Britannia, which owns popular brands such as Good Day, Tiger, NutriChoice and MarieGold, .
With competition from regional players intensifying, Britannia Industries is taking a localised approach of looking "at India not just as one country but as many countries within" to stay ahead of rivals and scale up the strategy going forward, according to Vice Chairman & Managing Director Varun Berry. Britannia, maker of Good Day, Marie Gold, and Tiger biscuits, would not go for a price war; it would leverage its brand strength, execution, and network of 70 factories and a vast distribution spread across the country, making its product available down to the lowest population strata, he said. About margins, Berry said it has gone up through cost optimisation initiatives. Britannia has been doing cost optimisation of almost 2 per cent of revenue saving for almost last 13 years. "And as we go forward, we are looking at seeing if we can continue with that 2 per cent, and we certainly have a line of sight to do that," said Berry. Moreover, commodity inflation on input materials is ...
Britannia expects half of its domestic sales to come from rural markets in the next 3 to 4 years, as it is expanding its distribution network to increase its presence in those regions with aspirational buying preferences, said its Vice Chairman and Managing Director Varun Berry. The rural market is "very important" for Britannia, where the maker of Good Day, Marie Gold, and Tiger biscuits reported growth in double-digits in the latest April-June quarter, and is now amplifying reach through direct distribution to have a "continuous stream" of products being available in those far-flung markets, he added. Britannia, which was an urban-centric company, now gets around 40 per cent of its sales from rural markets, Berry said, adding that rural is now growing ahead of urban markets, and this trend is expected to continue. "Our split between urban and rural was something like 75 per cent and 25 per cent. Now, we have gotten to a 60-40 split. It is still in favour of urban, but slowly, ...
The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the closure of a unit manufacturing biscuits for Britannia Industries Limited (BIL) for over three decades by overruling a Bombay High Court verdict. Justices Sanjay Karol and Prashant Kumar Mishra passed the verdict on an appeal of Harinagar Sugar Mills Ltd (HSML) against the high court's February 17, 2023 order. While HSML initially offered Rs 10 crore as a goodwill gesture to its employees, the court enhanced this amount to Rs 15 crore and ordered its payment within eight weeks. Considering that some of the employees may be, with the closure of this concern, losing the only job they have known and still others would be, for no fault of their own, rendered unemployed, we appreciate the gesture made by HSML. Such a statement is taken on record," the court said. Senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for HSML, had left it to the court to decide on the enhancement. We deem it just and proper to further enhance the appellants' offer by a sum