Nadia Chauhan, Parle Agro’s Joint MD, says Hippo which marked the company’s debut in the Rs 6.500 crore Indian snacks market recently, is not a potato-based snack. “Hippo is baked wheat munchies and is clearly based on the health plank,” she says.
Available in six flavours currently — Italian pizza, Chinese manchurian, hot-n-sweet tomato, Thai chilli, yoghurt mint chutney and Indian chatpatta – the baked wheat munchies have no added MSG (monosodium glutamate), no GMO (genetically modified organism), no cholesterol and zero trans-fat.
Yet, the Rs 1,000 beverage major is not positioning Hippo on the health platform in its brand communication campaigns. That’s because no one is quite sure whether a niche positioning like health food as a snack option will work. In any case, analysts say that positioning is an extremely challenging, time-consuming and heavy marketing initiative, especially in an already cluttered market where every company seems to believe whatever is healthy is enough to make profits.
Anand Halve, co-founder of Chlorophyll, a brand building and strategy planning organisation, says: “In the food category, the concept that consumers want lots of health food, is over-played and a hype created by marketers. Snacking is not really a health-related area. If you give healthier bread or cereals, then it makes sense, but snacks are more about indulgence and having fun.”
“For instance, Safolla Zest, which was also a snack, was a failure. Similarly, zero-sugar sweets do not sell even one-fourth as much as proper sweets. So, healthy foods should be more of cereals or breads but positioning them in a category which is synonymous with indulgence, could be a challenge,” Halve added.
Hippo therefore has tried to break the clutter through social messaging and fun in its brand communication campaigns. The television commercial of Hippo stirs things up with an old Hindi film song, ‘Pyaar baant te chalo’ (Distribute love), and features an invisible creature called ‘Hippo’ which solves the world’s food crisis. The core message is that since hunger is the root cause of all the evils plaguing the world, it is best to kill this first so that other issues can get sorted out on their own.
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“Hippo is neither in the chips nor in the biscuits category. We have tried to create a new category which we call munchies. And the initial response has been fabulous,” says Chauhan. And the company is going all out to promote it as the opportunities are tremendous. The organised snacks market is growing at about 25 per cent per annum. Also, the Indian market is under-penetrated as the per capita snacks consumption is merely 500 gram.
Currently, Hippo’s distribution reach spans across 500,000 outlets and is sold in pack sizes of Rs 5, 10 and 20. “We are looking at a 100 per cent increase in distribution reach. We are also looking at introducing new flavours. Flavours is one area where constant innovation is possible, in addition to packaging, branding and marketing,” Chauhan adds.
Competitors are not exactly taking a break. PepsiCo is already present in the segment through ‘Aliva’ where more innovations are being lined up. Aliva is already available in four flavours. And Chittaranjan Dar, chief executive of ITC’s foods division, says that the company is working on as many as 20-30 healthy snacking products and will launch five to six in a few months. Aliva is already available in four flavours.