So Parle renamed its drink Parle Cola, though it never quite took off well. Parle’s Gluco Cola brand ran into trouble with Coca-Cola as the two names sounded similar. Post-independence, Parle added more product categories and brands like Cheeselings, a cheese snack, in 1956, and candies like Kismi and Poppins. “Launching Parle-G in 1939 was not just a business decision but also a responsibility to sell affordable biscuits to Indians (during British rule) at a time the market was flooded with costly imports,” Ajay Chauhan, an executive director at the company, said in 2013. World War II resulted in a severe shortage of English-made biscuits in India, providing a massive opportunity for Parle. Like Parle-G, Monaco remains popular to this day. Six months later, it introduced a salty biscuit named after the European country Monaco. In 1939, a one-oven biscuit factory began manufacturing the Parle Gluco biscuits, which have since become Parle-G, the world’s biggest biscuit brand by volume. An old Parle advertisement (Screengrab/Parle) Biscuit empire to fizzĪround a decade into the business, as war clouds loomed, the Chauhan brothers diversified into biscuits. The family set up a factory at Vile Parle in 1929 and employed 12 people to manufacture confectioneries such as lemon drops, peppermints, and acid drops. So Narottam was sent to Germany to learn the process of manufacturing boiled sweets, and he returned with the machinery needed for such a venture. This was also a time when only English-made confectioneries were available in India and the Chauhans sniffed an opportunity there for an Indian initiative. Mohanlal ran a tailoring business in Mumbai and his children often frequented England to purchase cloth. It was founded by Mohanlal Dayal Chauhan, a tailor from Pardi, Gujarat, and his five sons, Maneklal, Pitamber, Narottam, Kantilal, and Jayantilal. Parle began operations in 1929 out of a cowshed in Mumbai’s Vile Parle neighbourhood (a village back then), from which it derives its name. It is one of the three companies that use the parent Parle brand, launched in the earlier part of the 20th century. The privately-held Parle Products, owned by billionaire Vijay Chauhan, is worth over $1.3 billion, operates 100 manufacturing units, and sells in 40 countries. In November 2016, it forayed into the premium chocolate segment with Friberg. It also plans to ramp up distribution and introduce new varieties. Next year, it will turn its focus on to its popular toffees and candies such as Melody, Kismi, Mango Bite, and Kaccha Mango Bite. While the entire confectionery segment is worth some Rs 30,000 crore ($4.68 billion), according to him, Parle wants to raise its share from Rs 1,000 crore ($158 million) to Rs 1,250 crore ($195 million) by the end of the year.
Now, over the next year, the company wants to grow this business by at least 25%, Rao said. There wasn’t much effort,” B Krishna Rao, category head at Parle Products, told Quartz. “Somehow we missed the opportunity (to build on the confectionery business). To offset this, Parle is turning to confectioneries, particularly candies and toffees, a segment it hadn’t taken seriously in a long while. Rival brands like those of Britannia or ITC Foods may not escape unscathed either, but the biscuits segment is bound to suffer, potentially jeopardising Parle’s revenues.
Currently, a 250 gram pack of Parle-G costs Rs 20 and, according to Fortune magazine, 4,551 Parle-G biscuits are consumed every second across the world. So the company must now raise prices to pass on the extra cost to consumers. Kicking in last month, it increased the tax slab on biscuits priced below Rs 100 ($1.56) for a kilogram from between 9% and 10% to a steep 18%.
Its flagship Parle-G brand enjoys an 80% share in the glucose biscuits category.īut the new GST regime has been a tough knock. In 2015, it enjoyed a 35% share in the Rs 25,000 crore ($3.9 billion) segment. Some 85% of Parle’s revenues come from biscuits. Parle Products, headquartered in Mumbai and best known for some of India’s most popular biscuits brands such as Monaco, Krackjack, Hide & Seek, and, of course, the iconic Parle-G, is resuming its focus on what it set out with 88 years ago – confectioneries.Īnd for this it has India’s biggest fiscal reform since independence, the Goods & Services Tax, to thank. It’s a kind of homecoming for India’s most popular biscuit maker – but after a long time and, interestingly, away from its mainstay.
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