By Bindu D Menon
Nestle India is strengthening its packaged food business even as it is looking to introduce newer food categories in the premium bracket, Suresh Narayanan, chairman and managing director, said at a media roundtable on Thursday. He said that the company will continue with its premiumisation play across various categories such as a chocolates and coffee.
“We have already launched 10 new products this year. We are looking at more categories while focusing on premiumisation of our products,” Narayanan said.
He said that food inflation is still a cause of concern despite measures taken by the government to check overall price rise and the movement of commodity prices needs to be closely watched for a long-term impact.
Going by publicly available information, now it is reasonably clear that with a 30% deficit in the monsoon, Kharif crops might get impacted, even if the sowing is good, Narayanan said.
He said that if the rural sector gets badly impacted due to rains, then demand from those markets will have an impact. Nestle is expanding its rural exposure with relevant offering and currently gets one-fifth of sales from far-flung markets.
“Even though my play is relatively lower at about 20% (in rural) it is fairly significant,” he said adding “At the moment, things are looking stable”.
During April-June quarter, Nestle had witnessed an uptick in consumer demand in the rural economy.