Reliance Retail wants to democratize traditional sweets and has entered into a distribution partnership with over 50 traditional mithai makers from across India to distribute, mass produce, modernize packaging and develop traditional Indian sweets with an extended shelf life. The company wants to take consumption of traditional sweets beyond seasonal opportunities.
These packaged mithais such as laddoos, barfis, and pedas are now in direct competition with chocolate brands such as Cadbury and KitKat and are at present being placed at all Reliance grocery stores such as Smart Bazaar, Smart and other grocery formats, besides Reliance Retail’s e-commerce platform JioMart.
The scaling up coincides with the peak festive season in India followed by the wedding season, with discretionary product makers, including those selling gourmet foods, reporting a double-digit surge in sales.
Reliance Retail is also developing single-serve packs of these mithais, which will be placed at kirana stores as the business scales up. At its grocery stores, Reliance Retail has created multiple bays and free-standing units for traditional sweets, similar to what modern trade stores do for chocolates and confectionery brands. So far, the partnerships have led to over 500 packs and a hundred varieties of traditional sweets, and the company is looking to partner with more local players.
Some of the regional sweet makers Reliance Retail has partnered with are Doodh Misthan Bhandar of Jaipur, Lal Sweets in Mysore, Prabhuji & Bhikharam Chandmal in West Bengal, and Chawannilal Halwai of Ajmer.
Reliance Retail sees these partnerships as helping smaller local sweets makers go mainstream.
The Indian chocolate market reached a value of US $2.2 billion in 2021 and is among the world’s fastest growing markets for chocolates, research firm IMARC Group said in a report. The researcher forecast the Indian chocolate market to reach US $ 3.8 billion by 2027. Cadbury and 5-Star maker Mondelez lead the category, with other significant players being Nestle, which makes KitKat and Munch, Mars Wrigley, which makes Galaxy, Snickers, and Twix, and Ferrero. The traditional sweets market, in contrast, remains largely unorganised, with hundreds of specialized local players.