Biscuit brands in rural Bihar

Blog post for this months has been low as I was on vacations attending relatives marriage at my native village in Rohtas ,Bikramganj ,Bihar ( eastern region of India). But for my curiosity I did a small survey of bakery products available in retail shops in that rural area .Following has been my observations .

Branded biscuits like Britannia and Parle are of old stock more than 6-7 months .
Companies are not interested in taking back outdated stocks.
Local brands are doing good business.
Local brands are fresh compared to national brands
Major local brands are BISKFARM , BHAGWATI , SABISCO

Local brands can take on national brands if they do their packaging and marketing /pricing aggressively .

Priya gold emerging as a national brand

I was just flipping some business magazine for Indian top 10 food brands. What stuck me was Priya gold s entry into the top 10 . In span of 10-15 years Priya golds growth has been spectacular .Its brand recall has amazed many trade pundits .

Priya gold now has market share of 12% for bakery market with britannia(38%) and parle(42%) as the leader of the pack .

It all started in year 1993 .Shri B. P Agarawal established a biscuit plant in noida and started manufacturing biscuits . With products like classic , butter bite becoming popular in short period .Below are the reasons for its popularity

ADS AND PROMOTION

It has establsihed it self as low cost premium product plank and with a popular ad campaign which ran for years was "" HAQ SE MANGO "' with Priya tendulkar as their lead personality for ads .She was popular with middle class for her role as rajni in tv serial rajni who stood for middle class rights.Now of course they have enrolled Karisma kapoor for makeover of image on upmarket image . Priya gold ran promos for it products.declaring prizes on it products.Priya gold focused on rural and tier 2 and tier -3 towns markets with great success .

PACKAGING

One of the most innovative thing surya foods did was introducing ""family pack ""where you have pack of 400-300gms .Normal packs are of 100g , 150g , 75g packs .
When every one was launching sachet or ""tikipacks"" ie small packs of 3-4 biscuit a pack. Surya food went ahead with family packs and it was instant hit . Indian middle class lapped it up . Others had to follow but by the time Priya gold had its customer base .

PRICE AND DISTRIBUTION

Pricing was done keeping with competition it placed it self on low price premium product plank.They delivered directly to dealers from there godowns with better margins to retailers who pushed their products for better sale.

Surya food now produces 23 varieties of biscuits with tonnage up to 150000 p.a. Popular products are Butter bite ,Marie lite ,Classic cream,Boss,CNC ,CheezeBit