Sep 1, 2020
Let’s find out how Britannia’s Good Day has continued its exceptional domination of the premium cookies in the market over the last ten years
Flashback in the early 1980s, Parle donned a new name from Gluco it renamed its brand to Parle-G. The whole concept to distinguish itself from a arrays of similar look-alike brands springing up in the market for consumer attention.
The Idea made sense and received success too. The glucose biscuit market in the country was booming; glucose was universal for biscuits; being the biggest, Parle needed to stand out from the mob of biscuit makers which it did considerably.
Simultaneously, Parle’s rival Britannia, which had biscuit brand Glucose-D, then recognized by the late Amjad Khan (who played the iconic villain character of Gabbar Singh in the cult movie – Sholay), was also planning to single out itself, though in a premium way.
Britannia, the maker of the ‘Gabbar ki asli pasand’ biscuit rolled out a premium biscuit brand – Good Day-in 1986. There was a risk involved, as the segment was new, the market was overwhelmingly in favour of glucose biscuits, and Parle-G was still leading and having a ‘good day’ run.
Coming back to present scenario, Glucose runs out of energy for the first time in India. Cookies and cream had overtaken as the biggest category of biscuits in 2012. The momentum only gathered pace over the next ten years.
In March-ended FY2020, the glucose market size was at Rs. 5,444 crore, a muted growth over the last year, when it was Rs. 5,442 crore. Parle had a staggering 83% value market share. According to FMCG analysts citing Nielsen market share data, rival Britannia had a meagre 10.4 percent.
In the March-ended fiscal 2019-20, Britannia found a new market of Good Day. With a market size of Rs. 9,429 crore (from Rs. 8,600 crore a year before), Britannia had a impressive 57.3% market share in premium biscuits. Parle is distant third with 9.4%, and behind ITC, which garnered 17.1%. In premium cookies (over Rs. 5,500 crore category), Britannia rules with 67.6%. Thus the range of launching Good Day paid off.
Brand as well as bakery and confectionery market analysts are progressive, “Britannia left Tiger back and has kept focusing on its premiumization strategy,” says Harish Bijoor, who runs an eponymous brand consulting firm. The company today is a centre of many premium brands that have made deeper inroads into markets. “This surely is testimony to the fact that premium brands have a space in every ‘nukkad’ and every village as long as they come in affordable packs,” he added.
For last 100 years, India has been primarily a glucose-dominated market: With low margin and catering to mass market. Parle has dominated the market for many years only to be led by Britannia two decade back. In fact, the history of biscuits in India mirrors the path paved by Britannia in the country.. “With Good Day’s launch, the country got introduced to the premium category, which was nice but not artisanal,” stressed Jaspal Sabharwal, CEO of TagTaste, a sensory analytics and product development platform.
Sabharwal pointed out that Good Day stands out as one category that consistently delivers a sensory score of 5.87 on a bliss scale of 7. Britannia. As he again expressed that the company must have spent over 80,000 man-hours over the past three decades to reach this milestone. “It is not easy to beat such legacy products without the rigour of market-driven R&D and time,” he added. Good Day has continued with its ‘Good Days’ for decades.