How Pravin Kulkarni is taking Parle into newer segments of snacks and sweets

MUMBAI: The inviting smell of freshly-baked biscuits can be distracting for visitors to the Parle Products factory in the Vile Parle suburb of Mumbai. However, one company executive has little time to enjoy these little pleasures, occupied as he is marketing these goodies in a highly-competitive market.

Forty seven-year old Pravin Kulkarni, who heads marketing for Parle Products, the 83-year old firm best known for its Parle-G glucose biscuits, is used to fighting back from the brink. When he joined Parle back in 1994 as a junior manager, Britannia Industries was in the ascendancy. Hobbled by dated packaging and chronic supply chain limitations, Parle struggled to stay ahead.

Britannia rode roughshod over the market leader, gaining a share of over 20 per cent by 1997 with its Tiger glucose biscuit brand. Parle and Kulkarni reacted by overhauling its packaging, expanding its manufacturing and launching a new marketing campaign focused on a broader set of physical and mental benefits-like the G for Genius series-to widen its appeal.

History then repeated itself, when Parle's KrackJack, a leader in salted biscuits since launch in 1974, was blindsided by 50-50 in the same segment, again from Britannia. Parle's response was to overhaul

KrackJack, launch a Krack and Jack commercial to bring back biscuit buyers and regain its place at the top. "We lost nearly 8-10 per cent share in that time and were compelled to think of fresh ideas," says Kulkarni.

Parle is now looking to take the fight to the opposition. Kulkarni is overseeing the re-launch of brands such as Hide & Seek (with new campaigns and variants); introduced new offerings like 20-20 cookies, which is today a 800-crore brand; and even earned Rs 100 crore from confectionery label Kaccha Mango Bite.

Kulkarni is keen to aggressively grow Parle's non-biscuit portfolio. "Biscuits today account for roughly 85 per cent of our business; we now want to now build a more balanced portfolio," he says.

Confectionery accounts for around 7 per cent of the business today, and of the business today, and Kulkarni would like to get to 15 per cent in three to four years. Similarly, he wants to increase the share of snacks - where Parle has brands like Monaco smart chips and Parle's wafers - the plan is to increase its share from around 8 per cent to a fourth of total revenues before 2016.

Meantime in the mainstay area of biscuits, Kulkarni is keen to push more premium products into the basket. "We have a nearly 44 per cent share in the cream biscuit market ...Consumers are willing to also spend on new categories such as digestive biscuits," he says. "We will expand our presence in these emerging categories."

It has not been easy going. "Despite strong internal pressure to stick to the tried and tested mass brands, Kulkarni has managed to prevail on moving towards premium-ising Parle," says Sujay Mishra, CEO of AZ Research, a research and marketing solutions firm based in Bangalore, who has known Kulkarni for 15 years.

If the battle in the 90s was with Britannia, a new rival in ITC Foods emerged a decade later and quickly grabbed a chunk of the biscuit share in the market.