Britannia edges past Parle

With a little over 28% in value terms in April this year, the Nusli Wadia-run Britannia Industries has overtaken Parle Products by a minuscule margin to become the market leader in the biscuits segment. Parle’s value share stood at 27.5%, giving Britannia a half percentage point lead, reported The Times of India (TOI) in its issue of May 30, 2015. Parle, however, dominates the Rs 25,000 crore biscuits market in annual ratings of both volume and values with its iconic Parle G glucose biscuits and the company is making efforts to claw back its lost share by focusing on children with a series of exclusive packs, revealed TOI.

Britannia’s premium brands

Ever since Wadia inducted Varun Berry, formerly of Unilever and PepsiCo, as managing director, Britannia has introduced a number of innovations, experimenting with social media platforms like Twitter to reach potential customers for recent launches like Pure Magic Chocolush, Nutri Choice Heavens and Britannia Chunkies. The last was released exclusively online on Amazon, a first for an Indian fast moving consumer goods company (see "Selling cookies online,” Business, Parsiana, December 21, 2014). The brands that are growth drivers for Britannia are Good Day and Marie, TOI notes.
There are other factors that have had a bearing on Britannia’s recent success. As Berry explained to TOI: "The mandate was to shore up profitability and growth. The one factor that’s made market leadership possible, if you ask me, is people. We picked up the right people for senior functions and made them perform much bigger roles than they were doing. This provided some accelerated learning besides pushing us out of the comfort zones.”