Diplomacy to Q-comm: Melody's demand spikes

BENGALURU/DELHI/MUMBAI: The shelves began emptying even before Parle Products could quite understand what was happening. By Wednesday evening, searches on Melody, the caramel toffee by the Mumbai-based manufacturer of biscuits and confectionery, had jumped over 190 times on Google, while search strings like 'Melody Modi', 'Meloni Melody' all had 'breakout' tags on the search platform.

It didn't take much time for ecommerce and quick commerce platforms to see a spike in orders. By 3pm, searches for Melody toffees across these platforms surged about 50-fold, Mayank Shah, VP & chief marketing officer, Parle Products, told TOI. The spike came just hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi gifted a pack of Melody to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during a diplomatic meeting. The video of that moment quickly spiralled into one of internet's favourite moments of the day. By evening, on YouTube channel the video had generated over 130 million views, reports showed.

According to Shah, by Wednesday afternoon around 40-45% of dark stores of Q-Comm companies like Blinkit and Zepto that are across Parle's network had run out of Melody stock.

The nearly century-old company had to rush additional inventory to ecommerce warehouses, dark stores and retail trade channels to keep up with demand.

"It is a moment of immense pride for all of us at Parle Products," Shah said. When the Prime Minister gifts a Parle product to world leaders, it is a powerful testament to the potential of Swadeshi brands on the global stage. "Melody is India's largest selling toffee brand and is today available in over 100 countries. We are deeply grateful to the Prime Minister for giving Indian brands this incredible recognition and visibility."

A senior executive at Blinkit, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to TOI that the platform had also seen a sharp rise in both searches and sales of Melody across pin codes after the Modi-Meloni moment went viral online. Even govt joined in. Piyush Goyal, Union commerce & industry minister, posted on X that India's "Toffee Tale would surely be melody to the ears." Goyal highlighted that in the last 12 years to March 2026, exports of Indian toffees, caramels and similar sweets had grown nearly 166% to Rs 132 crore.

Dalal Street punters, never a step behind to grab an opportunity to make money in a frenzy, also jumped in right after the Melody video started getting eyeballs. Ironically, though, they bet on the stock of a wrong company: Parle Industries, a company that's in the waste management and recycling business. The company doesn't have any direct connection to Melody toffee maker Parle Products.

By noon, the stock that had lost about 35% in the last three months, hit the 5% upper circuit at Rs 5.25 on BSE and closed at that level. Volumes spiked more than two times to over 8.5 lakh shares.


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