Kellogg’s goes beyond breakfast

MUMBAI: Since the Michigan-based Kellogg Company set foot in India in 1994, it has strived to change breakfast habits of consumers. Over the last 24 years, the complex breakfast routine of Indian consumers have not entirely transformed. What is certainly changing though is Kellogg India’s workplace culture—to imbibe, what it calls, the ‘soul of a startup’ — and its business strategy to make cereal an all-day snacking product in addition to a breakfast item.

Kellogg India, which has been clocking double-digit growth over the past seven years (it doubled its business in volume during this period), is now focussing on fewer bets versus a larger pipeline of innovations.

The new strategy and philosophy comes with recent leadership changes at Kellogg India. Nothing explains Kellogg India’s fresh approach better than a comment by its new MD (India & South Asia), Mohit Anand. “We’re a food company...For us, it’s more about moving towards the passion for foods,” Anand told TOI in an interaction.

The canvas just got wider for Kellogg India to explore growth opportunities with its products at and beyond breakfast, while catering to local tastes.

“Around 72% of Indians skimp on breakfast and more than 50% do it because of lack of time. So we have a role to play here. We want to make cereals more local. One of our fastest growing products is ‘almond and honey’. ‘Brownie delite’ doesn’t do that well — it’s an alien taste. So there is a shift there,” said Anand, who took charge at the helm in July 2017.

Such realisations are not new to multinationals operating in India. Some years ago, PepsiCo India came up with ‘Nimbooz’ and countering that was Coca-Cola’s ‘Nimbu Fresh’. McDonald’s, on the other hand, started serving ‘Aloo Tikki’.

Kellogg takes comfort in the fact that India is the largest grains market, opening up the opportunity wide for any packaged foods company playing in grains-related packaged products. Kellogg India director (HR) Rohit Kumar said, “We are known as a cereal company. But are we restricting ourselves to just breakfast cereal? The answer is no. The moment we restrict ourselves to breakfast cereal, then we will get complacent. When we expand our thinking beyond cereals and look at food offerings hinging around grains, that’s where our strength lies.” While there is still a focus on growing its core products, where Kellogg’s Chocos is the largest selling stock keeping unit (SKU), what boosted the company’s hopes is the performance of its new snacking product, Chocos Fills, a grain-based Indian innovation.

“Chocos Fills played to our strengths of offering a grainbased snacking option. It’s an any time snack with multiple occasions as the positioning. So the price point architecture includes a big pack that serves the purpose of breakfast cereal and at the same time there is a Rs 20 price pack for on-the-go consumption. We said we will go all out and allocate disproportionately behind this idea. The response has been encouraging,” said Kumar.