Maggi share in Nestle biz to go up with healthy push

Kolkata: Maggi, the

Nestle

brand that is synonymous with snacking in India, is likely to go up with respect to its weightage in the national portfolio. The brand that boasts iconic two-minute preparation of noodles currently holds 25%-30% of the Nestle India portfolio. In the next few years, Nestle will bring the majority of its healthy snacking products under Maggi. Nestle India CMD Suresh

Narayanan

disclosed this to TOI on the sidelines of an interactive session with ICC YLF. The brand, which was on the brink of collapse in the last decade, came back strongly. The company would introduce products under new categories such as healthy snacking, plant-based and healthy-ageing products. “Some of these products would be launched under the Maggi brand and some under other brands,” he added. Globally, Nestle owns 2,000 brands while in India it has 20 brands and 1,000 stock keeping units (

SKU

). Narayanan said that most of the new product launches in India would be under the existing brand and Maggi will have a good share in it. “The Maggi portfolio is likely to go up from the current level,” he added. Milk and nutrition with 40% weightage is the biggest segment in the Nestle portfolio. Earlier, he said that Nestle India has a very aggressive growth strategy and in the last four-five years, the company has introduced 115 new products and 153 variants. In the last six-seven quarters, Nestle has been getting healthy double digit-growth from smaller towns. The rural sector constitutes 20% of the sales of Nestle while the remaining 80% is urban that includes smaller towns. But going forward, the share of rural volume may be higher at 24-25%, indicated Narayanan. Commenting on e-commerce, he said that it is 6-7% of its total sales. “The physical channels are also very important for us and we shall not push any particular channel rather we shall leave it to consumer choice,” he added. The Nestle CMD did not rule out the possibility of another price hike in future as the “commodity prices have gone up substantially”.