Parle-G biscuits were earlier called 'Parle Gluco' until the 1980s and then changed to Parle-G, where G stands for Glucose, not Genius!!
Also, in a 2011 Nielsen survey, Parle-G was reported as the best-selling brand of biscuits in the world.
But during the Pandemic, when other businesses were hurting, Parle-G sold a record amount of biscuits. Want to know why...?
According to a senior company official, leading food company, Parle Products logged record sales of its Parle-G biscuits in April and May during the lockdown.
The company has gained a market share of around 5% in the highly competitive biscuit segment, helped by Parle-G biscuits, preferred by the people stocking up their pantries during the pandemic.
Parle-G biscuits also gained traction as it was preferred by government agencies and NGOs working to distribute food relief packages to people during the pandemic owing to its economic proposition with a value package of ₹2 besides being considered a good source of glucose, Parle Products senior category head Mayank Shah told PTI.
“The growth was phenomenal, and as a result, Parle was able to increase its market share by 4.5 to 5% during the lockdown,” he added.
“This is one of the highest in the recent (time). At least in last 30 to 40 years, we have not seen this kind of growth,” Mr. Shah said, adding in his 20 years of working with the biscuits major, he hadn’t witnessed a performance like this.
Mr. Shah said Parle-G was comfort food for most Indians and that during times of uncertainty, it was consumed a lot. He added that even during earlier crises like tsunami and earthquakes, sales of Parle-G biscuits had gone up.
“That is the kind of trust people depose in the brand,” he said, adding Parle-G’s long shelf life as another reason for the preference.
The company had announced that it would donate three crore packs of Parle-G biscuits when the coronavirus pandemic intensified in India.
“We saw many other people doing that. Many other organizations were also helping people by distributing Parle-G biscuits,” he said.
Mr. Shah claimed that Parle had “the highest growth rate among all the biscuit companies” during the lockdown
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In 1929, Mohanlal Dayal of the Chauhans, a Mumbai-based family of silk traders, bought and refurbished a decrepit, old factory to manufacture confectionery (such as boiled sweets).
Deeply influenced by the Swadeshi movement (that promoted the production and use of Indian goods), Chauhan had sailed to Germany a few years ago to learn the art of confectionery-making. He returned in 1929, armed with the required skills and the required machinery (imported from Germany for Rs 60,000).
Located between the sleepy villages of Irla and Parla, the small factory set up by the Chauhans employed just 12 men, with the family members themselves serving in multiple capacities as engineers, managers, and confectionery makers.
Interestingly, it is believed that the founders were so busy managing the factory that they forgot to name it. And so, with time, the first Indian-owned confectionery brand in the country came to be known after its place of birth, Parle.
Parle’s first product was an orange candy that was soon followed by other confectioneries and toffees. However, it was only 10 years later that it began its biscuit-making operations. Even as the bugle for World War II was sounded in 1939, the company baked its first biscuit.
Back then, biscuits were mostly imported, expensive, and meant for consumption by the elite classes. United Biscuits, Huntly & Palmers, Britannia, and Glaxo were the prominent British brands that ruled the market.
To counter this trend, Parle Products launched Parle Gluco as an affordable source of nourishment for the common masses. Made in India, meant for Indian palates and accessible to every Indian, the humble biscuit quickly became popular. It was also much-in-demand by the British-Indian army during World War II.
However, in 1947, a severe shortage of wheat (India was left with only 63% of its wheat cultivation area after Partition) immediately after Independence meant that the production of Parle Gluco biscuits had to stop for a while. In an ad saluting Indians who had sacrificed their lives for the freedom of their motherland, Parle urged its consumers to make do with barley biscuits till wheat supplies were restored to normal.
In the 60s, Parle Products started feeling the pinch when other players in the market began launching their own glucose biscuits. Confused by similar brand names, most people would ask shopkeepers for glucose biscuits.
To battle the flood of knock-offs, the firm decided to create a packaging that would be unique to Parle Gluco while patenting its packing machinery. The new packaging was a yellowish wax-paper wrapper with a plump little girl imprinted on it (an illustration by Everest Brand Solutions), along with the brand name and company’s red-colored logo.
However, while the new packaging clicked with the biscuit’s target audience of kids and their mothers, it still failed to decisively distinguish Parle Gluco from the horde of “me-too” glucose biscuits brands in the market. This prompted the management to rechristen the biscuit and see if it helped it stand out from the crowd.
And so, in 1982, Parle Gluco was repackaged as Parle G, with the ‘G’ standing for glucose. The packaging material was changed to low-cost printed plastic to avoid duplication by small biscuit-makers (who sold their low-quality biscuits in a similar yellow wax paper). Its cheeky new tagline stated, “Often imitated, never equaled.”
Today, Parle G sells over a billion packets a month. That is around a hundred million packets of Parle G every month, or 14,600 crore biscuits in the entire year, which adds up to 121 biscuits each for 1.21 billion.
Written by -Naman Aggarwal
SOURCE A INSTAGRAM
SOURCE B WIKIPEDIA
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