News / Food & Beverage
Opportunities and Growth of the Indian Snacks Market
The Indian food and beverage sector is huge and highly competitive in nature. The industry comprises of several sub-sectors such as fruits & vegetables, meat & poultry, dairy, marine products, grains and consumer foods. Snack is one of the major segments of the packaged food division, which comes under the broad category consumer foods. Though the snacks market in India is dominated by the unorganized sector, the organized sector has shown remarkable growth in terms of market share in the last few years.
The snacks market is classified into two broad segments – Western and traditional snack segments, wherein western snacks enjoy more popularity in comparison to the traditional snacks. Moreover, the western snack segment is dominated by large number of MNCs and organized snack manufacturers.
The report provides a snapshot of the Indian snack industry which has witnessed several changes since 1995. In the initial years, the market was dominated by two players – traditional snacks player Haldiram and ‘Uncle Chips’ manufacturer Amrit Agro. Later on, with the entry of global beverage and snacks player PepsiCo, the market dynamics changed completely. Now, the market is dominated by PepsiCo with its wide range of product portfolio.
The other major players include Parle Agro, ITC, Parle Products, Balaji Wafers and Parle Wafers among others. A number of regional players have also entered the market in the last few years and are giving tough competition to the big players.
There are certain factors that predominantly work towards enabling the sector to grow in the likes of higher disposable income that aids in greater spending power by consumers, rapid urbanization which leads to busy lifestyle and subsequent inclination of consumers toward packaged food products and aggressive marketing campaigns by all the players to break the product clutter and attract consumers toward their brand. In addition to these, the other factors which are contributing towards rapid growth of the industry include growing working women population, fast expanding retail network and the convenience factor associated with snack consumption.
Though there is no specific regulation pertaining to snacks, quality standards laid by FSSAI has to be followed by the industry players. Various government policies that have been formulated for the food processing sector such as FDI, tax benefits and export promotions are applicable for the snack category as well.
