MAM
F&B cos reduce sugar to target health-conscious customers
MUMBAI: There’s never been a better time for fitness brands with the younger generation becoming more and more health conscious. With almost sedentary lifestyles, people are opting for healthier eating and exercise options to stay fit.
Brands are ensuring their communication shows their commitment to health but the challenge lies for brands that have stuck for a decade with high sugar and salt content and are now finding it difficult to change that perception.
The answer: either promote the product for its taste and goodness or alter its key ingredient to make it more appealing for the health conscious consumer. Recently, world’s largest food and beverage company Nestle announced that it will further cut the amount of sugar, salt and saturated fats in its products as it tries to improve the image of packaged foods.
The move may also be viewed as a safeguard measure by Nestle against the recently accounted sugar tax in the UK, wherein soft drink companies will now be required to pay a levy on drinks with added sugar. Nestle has Nesquik, Nestea and MILO in its drinks portfolio. The new tax was designed to curb rising levels of obesity in the UK.
Nestle and its rivals (Mondelez and Mars) are under pressure from a shift in consumer preferences towards healthier food and away from processed products such as instant noodles and frozen pizza. The maker of KitKat chocolate bars and Maggi soups is responding with healthier products and is also moving into higher growth categories, such as coffee, pet care, bottled water and infant nutrition.
It also confirmed its commitment made in 2014 to reduce saturated fats by 10 per cent in all relevant products that do not meet World Health Organisation recommendations. Nestle chief executive Mark Schneider remarked, “The trend towards healthier foods is to be observed worldwide. Combining the convenience of packaged foods with healthy good nutrition, that is where our sweet spot is.”
Nestle spent 1.72 billion Swiss francs ($1.71 billion) on R&D last year. The company launched over 1000 new products last year to meet the nutritional needs of children and wants to further enhance products for kids with fruits, vegetables, fibre-rich grains and micronutrients. Reformulating recipes to make its products healthier is part of Nestle’s effort to keep its products attractive for consumers. This year it launched a new Milkybar white chocolate bar that has 30 per cent less sugar.
Although the F&B giant has decided to take the healthier route in UK, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if it decides to alter the ingredients in all its operating markets to reach more consumers. India has lately become the playing field of all major brands and the move may or may not be implemented here, as the Indian chocolate industry was worth Rs 78 billion at the end of 2016 and is predicted to reach Rs 122 billion with a compounded annual growth rate of 16 per cent by 2019.
According to the 2016 Euromonitor International report, the chocolate confectionery market in India is projected to grow at around eight per cent per annum between 2016 and 2021 to reach Rs 16,200 crore (on constant value) from Rs 11,256 crore in 2016, backed by better retailing across rural areas.
Given Indians’ love for sweets, whether or not global giants tweak their recipes here will not impact sales. A consumer in rural India will buy a product, regardless of the alteration of ingredients, because he has little knowledge about the health aspect. However, consumers in urban and metro cities are the ones who are cautious and tweaking the sugar and salt quantity is likely to get them to add the product to their basket.
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
