No matter what your age, we have all grown up eating Parle-G biscuits. Either raw or with steaming chai that just makes it all the more yummier.?
During the lockdown it has proven to be a good ¡®filler¡¯ when there is nothing to eat or snack on.
According to reports, the Rs 5-a-pack biscuits especially came in handy for hungry migrants who took the arduous journey home to a place hundreds of kilometres away. Parle-G, it turns out, was a commonly distributed biscuit and light snack that people gave to the needy.?
This is one of the reasons why Parle-G which has been a household brand since 1938 sold maximum number of biscuits during the lockdown. According to The Economic Times, Parle Products refused to divulge the sales details but confirmed that March, April and May have been their best months in over eight decades.
¡°We¡¯ve grown our overall market share by nearly 5%... And 80¨C 90% of this growth has come from the Parle-G sales. This is unprecedented,¡± ET quoted Mayank Shah, category head at Parle Products as saying.?
Companies such as Parle had their business running under essential services.?Some of these companies also arranged transport for their workers for an easy commute home. The focus of these companies was to produce brands that drove maximum sales.
¡°Consumers were taking whatever was available - be it premium or economy priced. Some players may have focused more on premium value SKUs as well,¡± Anuj Sethi, senior director, Crisil Ratings, which recently conducted a study on FMCG players reportedly said.?
¡°Players had been focusing on enhancing distribution reach, especially in rural areas in the past 18-24 months; this worked well for them during the pandemic,¡± he added.
¡°During the lockdown, Parle-G became the comfort food for many; and for several others it was the only food they had on them. This is a common man¡¯s biscuit; people who cannot afford bread ¨C buy Parle-G,¡± ET quoted Shah as saying.?
He further said, ¡°We had several state governments requisitioning us for biscuits¡ they were in constant touch with us, asking about our stock positions. Several NGOs bought humongous quantities from us. We were lucky to have restarted production from March 25 onwards,¡± adds Shah.
So in the time of the pandemic Parle-G really proved to be the common man¡¯s biscuit as this is what most people relied on.?