Parle Agro — which makes fruit-based drinks like Frooti, Appy and Appy Fizz, and bottled drinking water brand Bailley — plans to be a ₹5,000-crore company by next year.
A de-growth in the synthetic carbonated soft-drink space and increasing popularity of fruit-based ones have seen Parle Agro increase its market share year-on-year.
The company will look to close the current year (Parle Agro follows a January-December year for accounting purposes) at around ₹4,200 crore.
According to Nadia Chauhan, Joint Managing Director and CMO, Parle Agro is also open to brand extension and portfolio expansion with more fruit-based offerings. Butwill go slow, as it does not want to launch “me too” products.
“We will, of course, try and expand the portfolio. I think that’s something important to us. But, unlike a lot of other companies we are not the ones who will go on introducing many products at a time. We take our time,” she told BusinessLine .
“Our agenda is to introduce products with a difference, which are not me-too or a copy of an existing one. Such innovations take a long time to establish and we have quite successfully done that,” Chauhan added.
Parle Agro introduced Appy Fizz — an apple flavour sparkling / fizzy drink — in 2005, virtually creating the fruit-based fizzy drink category. Today, it occupies a 99 per cent market share.
Similarly, earlier this year, it launched ‘Frooti Fizz’ (its mango-based fizzy fruit drink) — the first extension of its most popular and largest revenue generating brand, Frooti — in 32 years.
The FFSD (or fruit flavoured still drink) category in India is pegged at ₹5,500 crore, with the mango-based drinks occupying 85 per cent of the market.
Marker shareWhile Frooti enjoys a 25 per cent market share in the mango-based drink category, Appy (the apple flavoured drink from Parle Agro) occupies a 65 per cent market share in the apple-based drink segment.
According to Chauhan, there is no “either / or” between fizzy and non-fizzy drinks when it comes to determining the future growth drivers for Parle Agro. The entire fruit-based drink segment is growing.