Nestle India back on its path of winning the market share in instant NOODLES category – Giving a tough fight to its rivals like CG Foods, ITC, HUL and Capital Foods: Bonafide Research

Nestle India has regained market share in the country after it was re-launched following a five-month ban in 2015. Nestle’s Maggi brand tied up with e-commerce giant Snapdeal to burgeon its sales effectively. Snapdeal launched an exclusive ‘Maggi Welcome Kit’ with hashtag #SnapdealWelcomesMaggi all over India, which kept on trending for a few days. Nestle is also planning to bring back the chicken variant of its popular Maggi noodles on the online portal.
Nestle has been in India since 1912 and its brands like Cerelac, Nescafe, Kit Kat, every day, and Maggi are household names in the country. With the launch of Maggi noodles in India, the company created an entirely new food category called instant noodles in the packaged food market. Maggi is completely an Indian innovation by Nestle India. The company is strengthening its milk products and nutrition portfolio along with expanding coffee and beverages portfolio in the domestic market.
According to a recently published report of Bonafide Research “India Ready-To-Cook Market Outlook, 2021”, the instant noodles market is expected to grow with a CAGR of more than 17% over the period of 2016 to 2021. Nestle India leads the market, along with players like CG Foods (Wai Wai), ITC (Sunfeast Yippee), Bambino Agro (Bambino), Indo Nissin (Top Ramen), Capital Foods (Chings), and HUL (Knorr Soupy). Because of its first-mover advantage, Nestle had successfully managed to retain its leadership position in the instant noodles category. However, after the lead controversy in 2015, the company’s share in the noodles category slipped at a faster rate. When Nestle received all the clearing certificates and permission from the Indian government, the company started a major drive to make Maggie re-available across India. As a result, its market share started gaining again, and to further strengthen it – the company rolled out many innovative marketing strategies. Nestle has joined hands with e-commerce major Amazon India to exclusively sell the newly launched Nutri-Licious range of Maggi noodles. The company had also collaborated with Google and Paytm Mall to roll out new variants of Maggi noodles. In May 2017, Nestle launched iron-fortified Maggi noodles aimed at iron deficient (anemic) people in the country. With all this action happening, the market of ready-to-cook, which includes instant noodles, pasta & soup categories; is set to grow rapidly in the coming years. According to our report, modern retailers are dominating the ready-to-cook market followed by e-commerce and traditional stores. The southern region dominates the RTC market in India; however northern and western regions are also witnessing a significant surge in the demand over the last five years.
Major companies operating in the ready-to-cook market of India are Nestle India Limited, Hindustan Unilever Limited, ITC Limited, MTR Foods Pvt. Ltd., Capital Foods Limited, CG Foods (India) Pvt. Ltd., Bambino Agro Industries Ltd., Gits Food Products Pvt. Ltd., Kohinoor Foods Limited, iD Fresh Food (India) Pvt. Ltd., Maiyas Beverages and Foods Pvt. Ltd. and Ushodaya Enterprises Pvt. Ltd.