“We Want To Delight Our Customers.”

DR ASHOK KUMAR TYAGI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF HALDIRAM SNACKS, BELIEVES A COMPANY CAN ONLY BE SUCCESSFUL THROUGH A COMPREHENSIVE UNDERSTANDING OF THE MARKET AND WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT.

- Oliver Featherston

Beating huge multinationals is no mean feat for a homegrown company, especially in a market worth INR17,000 crore (US$2.5 billion). But that’s exactly the kind of accomplishment that snack producer Haldiram Snacks has under its belt as of 2017, having maintained its status as India’s largest snack company.

That success is paving the way for further expansion and innovation, and has helped the company achieve an international reach in the years since it was founded eight decades ago. Along with its pan-India reach, Haldiram Snacks is available in another 80 countries, including Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the UK, Australia and the US. Within India, Haldiram Snacks’ success is credited to its ability to offer snacks that cater to the Indian palate, a move that multinationals have failed to exploit.

But Dr Ashok Kumar (AK) Tyagi, Executive Director at Haldiram Snacks, believes the key to worldwide success is a keen sense of which way the market is blowing. “We’ve been constantly watching market data, quarterly, for the past seven, eight years,” explains AK. “What is our market share? What is our competitors’ market share? What is our numerical distribution? What is our competitors’ numerical distribution? Similarly, we’re looking at weighted distribution and share among the handlers. We’re trying to make sales and marketing objective-based rather than subjective.”