With customers turning to healthier food options due to COVID-19 pandemic, Prataap Snacks also wants to grab a piece of the pie from the healthy snacking industry.
To capitalise on the demand for healthy snacking options, Prataap Snacks will soon be launching ‘Omega fortified Potato Chips’. This will be the first healthy offering under the Prataap Snacks portfolio.
The company announced the launch of the potato chips while declaring its earnings on August 11, 2020.
Amit Kumat, MD & CEO, Prataap Snacks said that Covid 19 has changed the buying behaviour of the consumers.
“We believe now consumers are more cautious about health and looking for more hygienic products. In our view, this trend should continue and particularly in our industry that should help in shift from unorganised to organised or unbranded to branded products,” Kumat said.
“Further, now a set of people have started looking for a ‘better for you’ version of snacks. Though currently, that’s a niche category, as a snacks food company having a basket full of products across every category, we also want to have that product in our portfolio,” he added.
On the question of new launches, Kumat said, currently the company is working on products in the sweet and salty snacks category.
Traditionally, Indians are snack-loving people, and eating snacks is considered to be a habit along. So far, Indore-based Prataap Snacks has offered multiple variants of products across categories of Potato Chips, Extruded Snacks, Namkeen (traditional Indian snacks) under the Yellow Diamond brand. Its products are present across 27 states in India.
The total salty snacks market in India is estimated at Rs 29,000 crore, with an annual growth of 24 percent. The health snacks sub-segment is estimated to be around 2 percent of the overall snacks market.
Sreenivasulu Vudayagiri Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Unibic cookies indicated that during the lockdown, the company has witnessed a huge demand for healthy cookies such as oatmeal digestive cookies, honey oatmeal, multigrain and muesli.
While the idea of snacking encompasses a variety of foods, a recent survey finds that over the past few years, there has been a conscious change in people’s preferences and habits, and a stronger inclination is seen towards healthier snacking items.
According to a survey conducted by IPSOS, 91 percent of the participants try and opt for healthier alternatives whilst snacking.
The traditional snacking portfolio of Prataap Snacks seems to have not worked for the company which is evident from the results detailed on Aug 11.
Prataap Snacks posted a consolidated net loss of Rs 5.96 crore in Q1 (April-June) FY21 as against a net profit of Rs 9.65 crore reported in Q1 FY20. Consolidated net sales for the first quarter of FY21 stood at Rs 194.45 crore, dropping 41 percent from Rs 329 crore in the same period last year.
Snack Market
The Indian snack market is divided into four parts–Extruded Snacks, Namkeens Chips, and other snacks. Among these four segments, namkeens have the largest market share, followed by extruded snacks, chips, and others.
PepsiCo is a leader in the snacks market. Some of the other most popular Indian snack companies in India are Prataap Snacks, Balaji Wafers, DFM Foods, Bikanervala, and Haldirams. PepsiCo India has the highest market share year compared to other snacks companies present in India.
Source: Moneycontrol
