Leading confectionery player Perfetti Van Melle India, which has got a new MD at the helm, is looking to further scale up its brands and consolidate its position in the market. Rajesh Ramakrishnan, MD, Perfetti Van Melle India, said that the company will continue to focus on ‘premiumisation’ and ‘uptrading’ the consumers to higher price points. While it has iconic brands, it has to continuously reinvent itself to be relevant to consumers and expand its distribution network. E-commerce is bound to be key for the premium offerings. Edited excerpts:

As you have come on board as the new MD, what are the key priorities that you have set for your team?

The last two years were difficult for the entire FMCG industry, due to demonetisation and implementation of GST. Post that, we have been looking at ways to optimise our business model and that is a journey that we have embarked on a few months ago. It is really about making ourselves more relevant to the consumers. We have some iconic brands in the portfolio, however we need to constantly reinvent ourselves to be more relevant to the consumer and play a more meaningful role in the lives of the consumer. The other key thing is to have an extensive distribution network. We already have a strong footprint but there is enough headroom to grow distribution for many of our brands.

What will be Perfetti Van Melle’s strategy for future growth in India?

India is a critical market for us and there is a lot of headroom for us to grow. Growth is definitely the key agenda and we would certainly like to look at healthy double digit growth. We are focussing on leveraging the tailwinds that are there and making sure we are relevant to the consumer by offering them meaningful proposition, leveraging and continuing to expand our distribution. Premiumisation and uptrading the consumer are our focus areas.

You have been working on moving towards higher price points. Have price points such as ₹5 and ₹10 started gaining traction in the confectionery industry?

Yes, in terms of price points we have moved to ₹1 and beyond, say ₹5 and ₹10. If one looks at categories such as snacks and biscuits, a lot of sales happen at the ₹5 and ₹10 price points and we think it should be no different for the confectionery segment.

Of course, there is a significant chunk of consumers who are still sitting at 50 paise and single-use pieces.

But if we look at metros and urban regions, many consumers like to buy multi-packs and stock them at home and dole out small quantities to their kids. So we are seeing consumers make the shift towards higher price points and multi-packs.

Though it is early days, I think, for us as well as the industry, price points of ₹5 and above are starting to get salience, especially in urban markets.

Perfetti brought its global brand Chupa Chups to India some time back. Are you looking at bringing in any other global brands to India?

At this moment, almost all the brands that we sell globally are available in India. Now it’s a matter of consolidating our portfolio and making sure we focus on certain brands and build them to scale and leverage their equity. That strategy is currently work-in-progress and is part of the transformational strategy which is evolving.

How are you tapping the e-commerce channel?

We are dabbling in the e-commerce channel. For us it’s still in the nascent stage. But I think some good progress is happening. The key here is how do we offer relevant and differentiated product offerings on this channel. For instance, e-commerce consumers might want to pick up products and experiences that are not available on other channels.

Globally, we have packs which are customised and only available on the e-commerce channel. At some point, we will like to move in that direction here in India. E-commerce will definitely be an important channel for our premium offerings.

comment COMMENT NOW