United Biscuits wants to give a bigger thrust to its McVitie’s brand in India, and recently roped in actors Bipasha Basu and Shriya Saran to promote the range. The company is doing what competitor Parle Products had done in the past: banking on regional celebrities to push the brand in key markets. Early this year, Parle Products had engaged Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan and Bengali actor Rituparna Sengupta to connect with consumers at a local level.
“We have identified three key metros in the south — Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai — as high potential markets and engaging south Indian actor Shriya Saran will help us reach out to consumers more closely,” says Jayant Kapre, president, United Biscuits. The south, believes Kapre, has latched onto the health trend much faster than other regions and will be an important market for its digestive variant.
A recent entrant in India, United Biscuits is a marginal presence in the Rs 11,000-crore biscuits market. The market is already crowded and dominated by Britannia Industries, Parle Products and ITC which have an array of offerings across segments. More recently, Kraft entered the market with Oreo and will leverage Cadbury’s extensive distribution network to build its presence.
United Biscuits, whose digestive biscuits are a big draw globally, is hoping for similar success in India. “We want to build this category here which is a measly Rs 100 crore,” says Kapre. Britannia, with its Nutrichoice brand, and Mrs Bector’s Cremica Digestive biscuits will be its competitors in this segment. The glucose segment dominates the biscuit market in India with a 50 per cent share, followed by cookies (20 per cent), cream and marie (20 per cent and 10 per cent share).
While McVitie’s focus will be on the digestive biscuits segment, it will have offerings in other segments with variants like chocolate cream, butter, cashew cookies and marie. An orange variant is also slated for launch. Of course, establishing a significant presence in these segments will be a daunting task as each of them already have their winners: Britannia’s Good Day and Parle 20:20 in cookies, Parle Cream and Britannia Tiger Cream in creams and Britannia Marie Gold and Parle Marie in the marie category (source: Nielsen 2010).
Kapre says the company will invest in growing the umbrella brand, rather than focus on building each flavour variant. This is not to say that the brand is not taking small initiatives in each segment. For instance, for its cookies, the brand has done extensive sampling in companies. For McVitie’s marie, it has tied up with Hindustan Unilever’s tea brand for a cross-promotion. For its cream variant, which is targeted at kids, United Biscuits has licensed characters like Mickey Mouse (last year) and now Doraemon to draw consumers.
Chitrangada Kapur, analyst (consumer), Angel Broking, says bringing a regional celebrity on board might help the brand gain traction in tier 1 and 2 markets where spending power is on the rise. However, KPMG analyst (consumer) Anand Ramanathan believes that beyond the glamour of celebrities, the brand must educate consumers on the functional attributes and the health proposition which the brand is well known for.