Parle Agro’s Smoodh crosses ₹600 crore in turnover

New Delhi: Parle-Agro’s dairy beverage brand Smoodh crossed ₹685 crore in turnover in less than two years into its launch as the brand made inroads into the country’s rural markets.

In 2021—the Mumbai based beverage maker re-entered the dairy beverages market with Smoodh flavoured milk price at ₹10 per 85ml pack targeting the mass end of the consumer basket. Smoodh has now grown to become a ₹685 crore brand, as of February 2023, said a top executive at the company.

“This category has been dominated primarily with large packs, and high price points and that really ends up being a hurdle to actually expand the consumer base. The ₹10 price point has allowed us to actually take this category to new markets where flavoured milk had not really penetrated. We found that 50% of our business was coming from the rural segment,” said Nadia Chauhan, joint managing director and CMO, Parle Agro. The product has a retail reach of over a million outlets pan-India.

When launched, Chauhan had said the brand was geared to target mass market consumers with its entry-level price point and draw more consumers into the dairy-beverages market. While the brand has continued to maintain the ₹10 price point, earlier this month, Parle Agro launched Smoodh fruit lassi at a price point of ₹10 for a carton pack and ₹15 for PET.

Launch of Smoodh fruit lassi is in line with making Smoodh a ₹5,000 crore brand by 2025, the company said earlier.

“We have continued to maintain the ₹10 price point. Right now, with fruit lassi we have introduced the PET format…We will continue to expand this space with newer pack format, within the ₹10, 15 and 20 price points as we keep going forward. The idea is to really be able to get more consumers to sort of taste and try new product categories,” Chauhan said.

Parle-Agro’s beverage portfolio of fruit-based beverages, sparkling drinks and bottled water competes with beverage majors such as Coca-Cola, Dabur, PepsiCo, Amul and Britannia. It recently also on-boarded actor Dulquer Salmaan as the brand ambassador of Smoodh for markets in south India. Actor Varun Dhawan endorses the brand nationally.

“At the moment, we’re completely geared up from production and capacity perspective for the short-and-mid term vision that we have for our dairy beverages. We’re really looking at just being able to continue to build on what we’ve created with flavoured milk and also establish the new range of fruit smoothies that we’ve launched and also establish the new price point of ₹15 with our range of PET. We will also see our flavoured milk launch in PET shortly,” Chauhan said.