Parle Agro's Nadia Chauhan on the company's push to create new brands, categories

For Nadia Chauhan, Joint MD and Chief Marketing Officer of Parle Agro, it’s not only about creating new brands but also categories. When she joined the family business nearly two decades ago, Frooti was responsible for nearly 95 per cent of the revenues. “At that time in the beverage industry, the two categories that were well established were the fruit juice category and the synthetic carbonated drinks category. But beyond that, there wasn’t any more innovation or creation of other categories, unlike the food industry,” she said. In 2005, when Parle Agro launched Appy Fizz, India’s first sparkling apple juice, it was the creation of a brand new category. 

“We went from conducting a niche experiment to making it into a mass market full-blown brand. We created a substantial category in the country,” said Chauhan. Today Frooti’s contribution to total revenue has reduced to 48 per cent while Appy Fizz and sister brand B Fizz add 22 per cent to revenue.  

Now she feels they have done something similar with Smoodh, their flavoured milk brand that was launched last year. “While dairy/milk is found in every household, there isn’t much penetration of the packaged category,” noted Chauhan, adding that most products launched in the country were expensive and in the wrong package size.  “A lot of the products that were introduced in India were expensive. So they did not penetrate into the country and allow for more adoption of these kinds of habits. When we launched dairy, our starting point was can we do this at Rs 10. What we were seeing was that dairy products were priced at Rs 30, in package sizes too large for kids to finish,” she said. Smoodh is already contributing 6 per cent to the company’s revenues. 

Parle Agro’s water brand Bailley’s recently crossed Rs 1,000 crore in turnover. “It is a totally different business model where we operate with a network of entrepreneurs from across the country in a franchise model. It’s key to that industry,” said Chauhan. She says that over 10,000 brands are registered in the packaged drinking water category and the brands change every few hundred kilometres. “The need was to create a business model where you could have a factory every 100-200km. And that’s what we did through a franchise network. So instead of the brand changing we actually looked at having smaller factories, and much larger numbers. So we have around 60-70 factories across the country,” explained Chauhan. Bailley’s now contributes 13 per cent to the company’s revenues. 

Also Read: MPW 2022: How Schauna and Nadia Chauhan are pushing to make Parle Agro Rs 20,000 cr company by 2030