ITC’s Yippee noodles now Rs.1,000 crore brand

Mumbai: Sunfeast Yippee! has become a Rs 1,000 crore brand for the branded packaged food division of diversified conglomerate ITC Ltd. The second-largest selling instant noodles brand also commands over 22% market share in the overall market in India. With two significant milestones reached, the company management is now aggressively looking to grow the category, intensifying competition with market leader Maggi from Nestle India.

Hemant Malik, divisional chief executive - foods division, ITC Ltd, said the brand is less than eight years old in the market and has captured a significant share in the market. “It’s become a Rs 1,000 crore brand as reported by Nielsen India. When we got into the space, there was one very large competitor and it was very important for us to innovate and offer a differentiated product in the market. After seven-and-a-half years now, we have more than 22% market share led by innovations like round, long and non-sticky noodles sold along with vegetables in sachet,” he said.

This was followed by another innovation 18 months ago in the form of mood masala for consumers who’d want to have a bit less or more spice in the noodles, he said, adding the market share is higher at 37% in some of the markets in South India, he said.

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ITC is also working on introducing a larger pacak in the market in the near future and back it up with creative above and below the line promotional activities to enhance its market share. To this effect, the company has introduced an all-new ‘My’ range noodles in four variants.

Adopting a unique go-to-market strategy, ITC has partnered with the food and grocery e-tailer bigbasket.com to sell noodles exclusively on the latter’s e-commerce platform. The digital world, including e-commerce platforms, Malik said, is an effective tool to strengthen the brand’s visibility and build consumer franchise. Accordingly, the Yippee! My range noodles are being exclusively sold across the country on bigbasket.com for a period of one week. Thereafter, it will be available across retail stores nationwide.

“We believe a lot in the e-commerce space as it is growing over 120% for us in the last couple of years. While it’s still not a very large part, but certainly a very crucial part of our portfolio as we find that for certain categories, this channel can deliver much more. Digital/ e-commerce is very important opportunity areas as it offers a huge amount of consumer insights and shopping behaviour data that can be used to further grow the market for our products as well as build our portfolio of products,” said Malik.

This article was first published in DNA Money: ITC's Sunfeast Yippee now turns Rs 1,000 crore brand