Horlicks variant for women to drink rest of the market share

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New Delhi, Jan 27: Global pharma and healthcare giant Glaxo SmithKline (India) is planning to expand the range of its largest selling health drink ‘Horlicks’ and would soon introduce a special variant exclusively for women. It already has Horlicks Plus that is a soy-based version for the older population. The Rs 3,000-crore wellness and nutrition industry in India is poised for a big leap and growing at over 14% per annum. Currently Horlicks is consumed mostly by the children in India.

The launch of women horlicks would augment the company’s leadership which already has about 75% market share of health drink market with brands such as Horlicks, Boost, Viva and Maltova. Horlicks is the top most brand with sales of Rs 1,300 crore annually in the country and owns over 50% market share.

“With the launch, the company aims to extend the health drink into a complete family health drink brand with variants suiting every member of the family such as parents and kids,” a company source told FE. The company had earlier launched Horlicks Lite variant aimed at adults. It was specifically introduced keeping in mind the problems that are largely prevalent among grown ups and claims to have zero cholesterol, zero added sugar.

Sedentary and stressful lifestyle, changing food habits is pushing the demand for wellness and nutrition products. Also rising costs of medication have engineered the shifting of lifestyle gears from the “cure” to “prevention” mode, associate director financial advisory services pharma and life sciences with PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt Ltd Sujay Shetty said.

Drugs for acute diseases presently dominate the Indian pharmaceutical market, however, the increasing penetration of lifestyle-related diseases is expected to fuel the growth of drugs targeting chronic diseases, Shetty added.