Emami Agro­tech eyes a pie of India’s snack­ing mar­ket, to invest ₹750 crore

Emami Group’s food and agri-busi­ness arm Emami Agro­tech on Thursday announced its entry into the coun­try’s ₹50,000-crore pack­aged snack­ing mar­ket. The com­pany plans to invest around ₹750 crore in the next three years to grow the new high-mar­gin product cat­egor­ies.
As part of mak­ing its snack­ing brand “WeMe” a ₹1,000-crore brand in the next five to seven years, the com­pany also aims to tar­get younger gen­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­larly Gen Z and Mil­len­ni­als.
India’s snack­ing mar­ket, led by chips, is grow­ing at a com­pound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 8 per cent and is expec­ted to reach over ₹1 lakh crore by 2034.
The com­pany cur­rently out­sources the pro­duc­tion of three newly-launched cat­egor­ies — choco hazel­nut spread, potato chips and jhuri aloo bhaja (deep-fried potato sticks).
It is also plan­ning to set up an integ­rated green­field man­u­fac­tur­ing plant for the snack­ing products and staples in West Bengal in the next two years.
BRANDING PUSH
“We will invest around ₹400 crore for the plant. And, ₹350 crore will be spent on brand­ing and mar­ket­ing for the newly-launched products,” said Aditya Vard­han Agar­wal, Dir­ector, Emami Group.
Emami Agro­tech had entered into the branded staples mar­ket last year with the launch of maida, atta and suji. Explain­ing the entry into the snack­ing mar­ket now, Agar­wal said mar­gins in these product cat­egor­ies were much higher than that of staple products.
Emami Group Dir­ector Vid­ula Agar­wal, who is spear­head­ing the ini­ti­at­ive, said the new products are being launched in West Bengal first and that they will be rolled out nation­ally in phases.
“WeMe has been built as a digital-first brand where con­tent, com­merce and con­sumer engage­ment come together seam­lessly. This dis­tri­bu­tion strategy will enable us to make it instantly access­ible across key cit­ies,” he added.
Source: Pressreader