What makes the Parle G brand tick is also that it has been positioned on the health platform (a single pack of biscuit offers 450 calories). It’s very interesting and similar to the dollar stores in the US,” he says. “At this price point, price becomes more important than the weight of the biscuit. Nirmalaya Kumar, professor of marketing at London Business School, feels it’s a very smart strategy. Raw material costs account for 60 per cent of the total costs in this segment and packaging costs (plastic films) account for 20-25 per cent of this. Strict cost control at every point in its supply chain also helped - Parle entered into forward contracts with suppliers, outsourced production, increased the number of manufacturing locations to 60 and consolidated buying. The gamble paid off: Parle was able to sustain its volumes. Regular customers would have noticed the number of biscuits in a pack come down from 16 to 15 even as each biscuit became lighter, but they seemed to understand the cost pressures on the firm. Soaring input prices meant it opted for reducing the weight of the biscuit than increasing the price - first from 100 gm to 92.5 gm in January 2008, and then to 88 gm in January this year - in line with other biscuit-makers and FMCG players. Parle is, of course, not doing it for charity.

There are very few food items that are available for Rs 50-60 a kg,” says Pravin Kulkarni, general manager (marketing), Parle Products. “We want to cater to the masses and have consciously tried not to increase the price. Three years ago it did so, but quickly rolled it back after volumes fell sharply and consumers wrote to lodge their protest. Not that the company didn’t try to raise prices to offset the overall hike in costs. So, it’s not for nothing that Parle-G is the world’s largest-selling biscuit by volumes.

It’s a brand that has held its price line at Rs 4 for 25 years now - the price was last raised in 1994 by 25 paise. For nearly 80 years, Parle G has been a household name in biscuits and the key reason behind its success has been its ability to stick to its position as a mass brand.

Parle g biscuit