Britannia Industries’ strategy is ready to do what it takes to take on competition from regional players.
“If there is something that’s required in a certain region in terms of brand, flavour, pricing, recipe, we are ready to do all of that to make sure that we cater to that region and that’s holding us in really good stead,” Varun Berry, vice chairman and managing director at Britannia Industries, told investors on a conference call on Monday.
While talking about distribution, Berry said that in the Hindi belt, the company is currently lagging in comparison to its competition, especially in rural areas. He added that the company’s strategy is depth in urban markets and width in rural, and the company will continue with that strategy.
“On rural, while the width expansion will keep going on, especially in the focus market because like we have a large gap in our market share, there is also an immense opportunity in distribution and therefore from a distribution perspective, those focus markets are very critical,” Vipin Kataria, chief marketing officer at Britannia Industries, said on the call.
The company has increased its rural distribution and now has up to 30,000 rural distributors.
While talking about rural, Berry said that it is starting to look a little better, but added that it is still not out of the woods completely, but definitely better than earlier.
While talking about the drinks business, Berry said that he expects revenue from drinks could end the year at around Rs 200 crore, and the cheese business could see revenues upward of Rs 250 crore.
He added that its dairy business would be around Rs 700 crore and both the drinks and the cheese business will be around Rs 460-470 crore.
The biscuit major had released its April-June quarter earnings last week and had reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 506 crore in the first quarter of the financial year 2025, ended June 30, up 10.5 per cent from the same period the previous year due to better operating margins in the quarter.
Britannia’s total revenue grew to Rs 4,130 crore in Q1FY25, up 4 per cent compared to the same period last year. This was driven by high single-digit volume growth and improved operating margins over last year.
The biscuit major’s profit before interest, tax, and depreciation was up 5.7 per cent at Rs 789 crore.
First Published: Aug 05 2024 | 7:31 PM IST
