Kellogg’s eyes Indian foods for large bite of ethnic breakfast cereal market

Kellogg India, which has been touting its cornflakes and other breakfast cereals in India, and recently entered the savoury oats market, is now looking at the ethnic breakfast cereal market.

The cereal company is now after Indian foods like parathas, idlis and dosas after a nutritional study revealed that these are ideal breakfast foods and are preferred across the country.

Although Kellogg's had, in the past, tried to crack the ethnic breakfast market, it could not find much success in cracking the traditional Indian breakfast market and the company had to content with only ethnic flavours.

Kellogg's has tried out India-specific offerings such as mango and banana cornflakes in the past, but with no success.

''We have found that traditional breakfast is preferred by Indian consumers. But traditional breakfast is not adequate and is considered to be skimpy. We will continue to adapt our offerings for the Indian market and offer whatever is relevant,'' Sangeeta Pendurkar, managing director of Kellogg India, said.

The problem with Kellog's breakfast foods is not just the flavour alone, the US company has to address the age-old food habits of Indians in order to make it big in one of the world's biggest markets.

Kellogg's, a late entrant in the savoury oats segment compared to Marico and Pepsi, is also has yet to get its distribution in place for the oats category.

''Savoury oats will ride the same distribution as cornflakes and we expect to ramp up distribution in this segment in the next one month. We have introduced basic flavours such as pudina, which is new in the Indian market, along with the evergreen tomato flavour and will be exploring more variants depending on the consumer,'' Harpreet Tibb, director-marketing, Kellogg India, said.

Kellog's, however, has a 60-per cent share in the Rs700-crore cornflakes markets. While the oats market is still small, estimated at Rs160 crore, more multinationals such as Nestle and HUL are likely to enter the market soon.