Marico Industries is pushing to strengthen the positioning of its Saffola brand as a preventive, healthy lifestyle advocating food product, not just an edible oil, by introducing health and wellness products under the range, according to a senior company official. Marico has been on product offensive after the pandemic and has introduced several products under its Saffola brand such as honey, instant noodles, immunity-boosting products.
“Saffola today has been able to successfully migrate from just being an edible oil to a preventive, healthy lifestyle advocating food product brand. This is the space, where we want to take the brand,” Marico COO- India Sales and CEO- New Business Sanjay Mishra told .
It has now moved away from the “zone of being a curative and a medicinal product, to a preventive and healthy food”, he added.
According to him, Saffola now is a synonym of healthy and premium food products.
While talking about Saffola’s edible oil business, which is its core, Mishra said it has done well and has seen double-digit growth over the last 7-8 quarters.
Even the new launches under the Saffola brand have done well, he added.
“Saffola Honey, in the shortest possible time, has become synonymous with a good quality honey available in India and now is having a significant market share,” said Mishra adding that he expects Saffola Honey to be Rs 100 crore brand this year.
According to him, Saffola Honey progress would be a yardstick for any FMCG brand to attain such a scale within a year time frame.
“We will keep playing it. It is not that we are only leveraging Saffola and extending it. There are spaces where we would have to create new food brands, but at the same time it is an asset which you have,” he said
Similarly, Marico had entered into the Oats with Saffola brand and it has now around 90 per cent market share in the ‘masala oat’ segment.
“When we brought Saffola Oats to the market, people knew that Saffola was offering a food, which would be quality food,” said Mishra.
He added that “it has given us enough confidence to believe that our understanding of Saffola of having healthy food and quality product has been accepted and completely endorsed by our consumers.”
New products roll out such as honey, soya, instant noodles called as ‘Saffola Oodles’ all are inspired by the success of Saffola Oats, he added.
When being asked whether Marico would continue to add more products under Saffola brand in the food segment, Mishra said our priority is to scale the newly launched products.
“We have got into some exciting categories and tasted initial success. Our priority and focus would be to make them significant in the scale, consolidate position and take up a significant share,” he said.
Marico is now scaling its Saffola Soya Nuggets to nationally after having success in the pilot markets.
Demand for immunity boosters products is going to stay for some time, even after the pandemic.
Marico has launched two products into the segment under Saffola ImmuniVeda such as Kadha Mix Golden Turmeric Milk Mix.