Taking India by storm, Pulse Candy reaches Rs 100 crore in just eight months

Sweetness pays rich rewards! Candy sales are on the fast track, thanks to hard-boiled candies (HBC) such Pulse Candy among others that are pushing the Rs 6,000-crore sweet candy market to grow at 1.5 times the FMCG industry growth in the country. Dharampal Satyapal (DS) Group's Pulse Candy has reached Rs 100 crore within just eight months of its launch, its maker said, equaling the record of Coca-Cola's diet drink Coke Zero.

According to The Economic Times, the HBC segment, pegged at around Rs 2,100 crore, is growing at 24%, revealed data from Nielsen. "The category has low entry barriers that results in numerous new players entering the market every year. At the same time, there are fairly quick exits too. Low entry-exit barriers facilitate innovation on formats and flavours in the category," said Vijay Udasi, senior VP at Nielsen India.

Industry experts say, Pulse Candy, a kaccha aam (raw mango) hard boiled candy with a tangy salt filled centre, is one such innovation. "We launched it at Re 1. Other companies followed suit. Before that, everybody was selling 4gm hard boiled candies for 50 paise," said Shashank Surana, VP, new product development, at DS Group, the maker of Rajnigandha, Pass Pass and Catch spices. In April 2015, the Noida-based group had launched the candy in just three states—Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi, as a test-marketing drive and now it has broken records, reported Scoop Whoop.

While Perfetti leads in the caramel category , a flavour which constitutes 20% of the HBC segment, Parle is the dominant player with its Mango Bite brand. Interestingly, kaccha aam (26%) and mango flavour (24%) put together command 50% market share in the HBC category, followed by caramel and orange (16%). Inbisco is the other big player with its Kopico (coffee flavour) brand.

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