INSIDE NESTLE INDIA'S BHARAT TRAVELS

Pujari Hotel, a small wayside dhaba on the highway connecting Sitapur to Lakhimpur, two cities in eastern Uttar Pradesh, has a menu that can surprise you— vegetable Maggi: ₹35; butter Maggi: ₹50; paneer Maggi: ₹55.

- Suneera Tandon

The hotel’s owner, Mayaram, once made a living selling daal-rice and kachori. A year back, he switched to selling Maggi, the instant noodle brand from Nestle India Ltd that quickly rose to become urban India’s favourite comfort food since it was introduced over four decades ago, in the 1980s.

Mayaram’s switch to serving travellers noodles was partly driven by a shortage of cooks who could make elaborate meals. Instant noodles only take a few minutes to prepare and for ideas, the 42-year-old occasionally logs on to YouTube to look for recipes.

Sales have been brisk, Mayaram said. He stocks about 10 cartons of Maggi Masala noodles every week. Each carton has 12 packets, 420 grams each.

But it was not just demand or the shortage of cooks that influenced Mayaram to switch to easy-to-cook food. A huge sales machinery from Nestle is at play in this rural belt dotted with sugarcane fields.

About 90 km from Pujari Hotel, is Balak Ram Purwa, a village of 250-odd residents in the Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh. Here, on a hot August day, 47-year-old Shobha Verma, was busy manning Ma Gayatri Computers and Electronics. Once, this store operated as a repair store for broken fans and mobile phones. No longer. It is a grocery store that is covered in Nestle paraphernalia. There are neatly stacked rows of Kit-Kat and Munch chocolates. Nescafe coffee, Masala-e-Magic spices and Everyday milk powder sachets hung from strings.

This year, Nestle’s on-ground representative in the area, approached Verma to open a Nestle-fronted store. Verma, and her brother, then decided to convert the phone repair shop into a grocery store.

“Earlier, we would keep notebooks and candies priced at ₹1-2 because there is a school nearby. Now, I keep Maggi and Munch chocolates. People buy more Maggi here," Verma said. A local distributor visits the store twice a month to help her stock up.