Cadbury seeks bigger bite of candy market

Chocolate major Cadbury after achieving a 70 per cent market share in its core category is now keen on expanding its portfolio to include sugar confectionery.

Anand Kripalu, managing director, said that having a presence in this category would give the company a more well-rounded portfolio in India.

While the company has Halls which has a presence in this space, it is more of a mint, and less confectionery.

At present, he said, that company was considering options in the space and there were no immediate concrete plans. In addition to this, the company will now focus on building its presence in the snacking market, which it entered last year by introducing Bytes.

Kripalu said whatever new launches the company would do would build upon the core proposition of the brand and would not look at unrelated categories such as salted snacks.

Kripalu, formerly managing director-East Africa for Unilever had taken over as MD, Cadbury India earlier last year when Bharat Puri moved to Singapore as commercial strategy director for the Asia Pacific region.

On how India figured in the larger scheme of things at Cadbury Schweppes, Kripalu said, "India has been identified as one of the six battleground, or focus markets for the company globally. We will continue to invest in the country to grow the market."

He added that the focus was to grow the top line first and then the bottom line. "While we are strong in specific areas, as part of the larger market we have a very small share," said Kripalu, elaborating that while the company may have a70 per cent share of the chocolate market, it was still very small, at about 6 per cent of the overall gifting market.

"We would like to change this and grow our presence in the overall category," said Kripalu.

He said the company had recovered well from the worms controversy and was posting a healthy double-digit growth.

The strong enabling environment and changing demographics (chocolate consumption is said to decrease with age) along with the lifestyle and attitudinal shifts all bore well for the company building upon this growth, he added.