Bagrry’s innovates to win the Indian breakfast table

21-Nov-2011 - Last updated on 21-Nov-2011 at 16:43 GMT

Bagrry's taps into fast-growing cereal market in India with new launches

Related tags Wheat

Bagrry’s India is looking to grab its bowl of the fast growing Indian breakfast cereal market on the back of new product innovations and a rapidly growing demand.

Bagrry’s, which is known as India’s first local cereal maker, announced last week that it has launched bran-added cornflakes in five variants including organic honey, organic honey and almond, choco-almond, strawberry, and mixed fruit.

Divya Bagri Jain, vice president for business development at Bagrry’s, told FoodNavigator-Asia that the company was betting on the growing awareness of health and wellness to be the driver behind the adoption of its bran added cornflakes.

“We aim to address modern lifestyle related ills with our products, which are targeted at individuals across age groups, offering healthy food options for general wellbeing,” she said.

Jain said that the new product sees the company innovate to add bran to normal cornflakes to “genuinely increase the health quotient of the popular breakfast cereal. The bran helps weight control, better digestive health, and decreases the glycemic index [GI] of normal cornflakes.”

Jain pointed out that the innovation behind its new product is based on the fact that while making most cornflakes, the natural bran is lost, thereby making cornflakes very high in starch, high GI and low in fibre.

“This high GI is not good for health as it raises the blood sugar levels quickly leading to weight gain, cravings and low energy. We add back wheat bran & oat bran, to compensate for the fiber that is lost during manufacturing,” she said.

Jain also said that the two organic variants are a further evidence of the company's push for healthy innovations, adding that consumers are now aware of harmful chemicals being induced in our diet due to pesticides, fertilizers, etc.

“We are on constant search to source genuinely organic other ingredients for our products too. Currently, all variants of the bran added cornflakes contain organic honey,” she said.

The bran-added cornflakes mark Bagrry’s entry into the cornflakes segment in India, which has traditionally been dominated by multinationals, most notably Kelloggs.

The company has, however, been making oats and muesli products.

Jain said that the total breakfast space in India is estimated at 20 billion rupees, of which, the breakfast cereal market – comprising of cornflakes, oats & mueslis, is approximately sized at 6 billion rupees.

“Cornflakes acquires a major part of the market which is a little over 4 billion rupees and the 2 billion rupees includes both oats and muesli in the breakfast cereal space,” she said.

Jain claimed that that Bagrry’s is the number one muesli player in the Indian market, and with the new products, she hoped the country’s turnover would double over the next two years.