Be it a 5-year-old child or a 50-year-old person, one thing which remains the same between them is a Parle product. Parle-G is a chai staple in our country and almost all of us have grown up with it.
Parle is one of the oldest biscuit brands in India with a legendary fan-base. It is often mistaken that biscuits’ were the first product the company launched where it started its historical journey with confectioneries in 1929.
Surprised? Let us get a closer look to the journey of Parle which today boasts of housing over 40 brands across 5 categories – Biscuits, Confectionery, Chocolates, Snacks, and Rusk. Obviously, success is a fruit of consistent hard work and determination to make it large.
The legendary journey
The year 1928 witnessed the foundation of the brand when Mohanlal Dayal founded the “House of Parle”. Following year, Parle Factory started off its marketing production with confectionery brands ‘Gold Star’ mint and ‘Pepper Mint’.
Then in the year 1938, 10 years after its establishment the company decided to invest in the biscuit major and launched biscuits with ‘Parle-Gluco’ followed by ‘Parle Monaco’. Everyone’s favourite ‘Marie’ and ‘Cream Cracker’ was also launched in the same year.
The company also launched few products which were first of its kind in the country. It launched ‘Cheeselings’ in 1956, ‘Krack Jack’ (India’s first sweet and salty biscuit) in 1972, ‘Hide & Seek’ (molded choco-chip cookies which were a result of 9 years of R&D), the popular ‘20-20 cookies’ in 2008.
The year 2011 was an important year for Parle as it became the largest-selling brand of biscuits in the world. Recently, Parle launched new division ‘Parle Platina’ – to handle its range of premium products and also enters the Pulses category with its brand ‘Fresh Harvest’.
Today, Parle holds a 20% share of the ₹25,000 crore biscuit markets by value.
Also Read: Success Story Of BookMyShow: A Journey Full Of Ups & Downs
Trivia about Parle
The brand is not just popular for its long historical journey of a ₹5,000 crore company in a market dominated by Britannia Industries Ltd. but its popular for a lot of other reasons which most of us are unaware about:
1. 192 times you can go around the Earth (Earth’s circumference) if the Parle biscuits consumed annually are lined up end-to-end.
2. Parle biscuits are sold in more than 5 million retail stores.
3. 4,551 Parle biscuits are consumed per second whereas 400 million of them are produced daily.
4. 37,000 tons of wheat and 16,100 tons of sugar is required to produce 13 billion Parle biscuits.
5. If a month’s production of the Parle biscuits is stacked side-by-side, the distance between Earth and Moon can be covered.
This is the story behind the success of what we see Parle as today. Proper timing, patience and outstanding marketing strategy is what made this happen. Let’s hope the Startups aspiring for the sky and the moon takes inspiration from this and understands the importance of time in business.
