Britannia CEO Rakshit Hargave said Reliance may find the biscuit market tougher to crack than the cola business. He noted that popular Rs 5 and Rs 10 price points make aggressive discounting difficult. "The ability to disrupt those 2 price points in the biscuit market is much more difficult," he added.
Rakshit Hargave says the biscuit market's dominant Rs 5 and Rs 10 price points make aggressive pricing strategies harder to execute
Britannia Industries believes Reliance Industries may find it difficult to replicate the price disruption it triggered in the cola market in the biscuits segment, citing differences in pricing dynamics and the dominance of low-priced products.
Reliance Consumer Products Ltd (RCPL) recently entered the biscuits market with its in-house brand Independence, launching 28 new stock-keeping units (SKUs) in Tamil Nadu. The company plans to expand the brand across India.
Commenting on the new competition, Britannia Industries CEO and Managing Director Rakshit Hargave said the company would study Reliance's product offerings and monitor its entry into the market.
"As far as Reliance is concerned, we have to study what they have done. So they have come with a range of products, basically very similar to all the classical products in the market. And they are starting with Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu is a large state for biscuits also for us, as you would know," said Britannia Industries CEO & MD Rakshit Hargave in an analyst call on Saturday.
However, Hargave pointed out that the biscuits market has different pricing dynamics from the cola segment, where aggressive discounts helped Reliance disrupt established players.
"The disruption of price, which happened in the cola market. As you would know, in the biscuit market, a large part of the market operates at Rs 5 and Rs 10. So the ability to disrupt those 2 price points in the biscuit market is much more difficult than you can do in a cola market by discounting by Rs 5 or Rs 10," Hargave added.
Describing Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance as a "very respectable competition", Hargave said Britannia would closely monitor how the competitive landscape evolves.
He also expressed confidence in the company's competitive strengths and growth strategy.
"We also have very, very strong moats and very strong plans to go ahead, and we will see what and how it transpires," he added.
Reliance has already disrupted the beverage market through its Campa brand, following its acquisition of Campa Cola in August 2022. Campa delivered Rs 2,900 crore in sales in the first quarter, contributing almost one-third of RCPL's topline. It also accounted for almost "50 per cent of FY26 sales in Q1," according to RIL's earnings presentation.
The company plans to launch Campa in aluminium cans by the end of this month. It has already introduced Campa cans in Australia through Goodness Group, a company acquired by the Reliance group in February this year.