Noodles vs Foodles

Wish you all a very happy new year... Its been quite a year for me now happy to step into 2010... But me not the only one who is happy about 2010. There is one big fellow waiting to enter the 1000 crore rs market which has been more or less a monopoly for many years. The big guy is GSK (Glaxo Smith Kline) the king in Health drink market yes i am talking about Horlicks. Now GSK is entering the noodles market. I almost had an heart attack cos the market is wholly dominated by the Nestle group so if someone new is going to come must have a strong presence in India. Top ram-en failed in that cos of the Nissin Brand with that which is hugely unpopular in India. So this Horlicks maker with a strong presence across each and every home and hospital (psst its true that Horlicks is for hospitals) coming for noodles market almost threw me apart. So this big guy is not marketing with the brand GSK now . They are using horlicks for campaigning that's a noble thought great indeed. Now how is the noodle market for new entrant will people really like.

According to The Nielsen Company, the instant noodles market in India is 88,951 tonnes with a value offtake of Rs 988 crore. This market has seen growth of 30.6 per cent this year ending August 2009 over last year in value terms and a volume growth of 25.29 per cent. So mostly like the segment being hosted like a monopoly both nestle and gsk are doing it in different segments. But will the consumers take it that's a big question. There is one important case study on Dettol that was one war against savlon. Johnson & johnson tried to enter dettol segment through savlon they made many tactics on brand positioning by removing smells more hygiene and all. Dettol a brand by itself is there in the market for more than 50 years so one could dare beat that and yes savlon tried to do that. So what was the immediate strategy of Dettol it entered into band aid segment the key market for Johnson & Johnson. It almost tumbled like anything so J & J had to take back from Savlon and finally Dettol was the winner . You may call it as failure in Marketing strategy but its hard to break the brand loyalty. This is what nissin tried to do with smoodles and now GSK is trying with Foodles. I wish them a break even year. Who knows if the foodles are really tasty and if i like em surely in the next blog i will recommend you guys the product.