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Britannia to focus on 7 core brands

Reeba Zachariah

The Nusli Wadia-controlled Britannia Industries has decided to focus on seven core brands in the biscuits and bakery category.

Sunil Alagh, managing director of Britannia, said, "We have identified seven priority brands in the biscuits and bakery segment." These include Good Day, Tiger, 50-50, Snax, and the Cream Treat brands, Alagh added, but did not give the names of all the seven.

Britannia's portfolio of brands also includes Marie, Glucose-D, Pure Magic, Little hearts, Circus, Nice, Milkbikis.

With biscuits contributing more than 80 per cent to the company's total turnover, Alagh expects that over time the company would reduce its dependence on biscuits and bakery.

"We expect the contribution of biscuits to go down to 60 per cent of the total turnover in five year's time," Alagh added.

However, as of now Britannia is not planning to diversify into new categories, Alagh said. Last year, the company scrapped a plan of foraying into the mineral water \business.

In 1997, the company had diversified into dairy products and has a range of products like cheese, diary whitener, butter, ghee, milk and flavoured milk under the Britannia MilkMan brand. Britannia's dairy business currently accounts for Rs 1.65 billion of its annual turnover of Rs 13.54 billion.

The Rs 30-billion biscuit market is growing at the rate of 10 per cent per annum. Cream biscuits form under 10 per cent of the total biscuit market in India. Britannia's marketshare in the cream biscuits category is under 10 per cent . Overall, Britannia has a market share of 40 per cent while Parle has a market share of 30 per cent in the biscuits segment.

At a time when growth in most other FMCG categories have been tapering off to single digit rates, Britannia's focus on low-priced biscuits for the mass market and its dairy foray has helped it to sustain sales growth at healthy levels, analysts said.

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