Working for their bread and butter, literally: Britannia

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Working for their bread and butter, literally: Britannia

Vinita Bali said, "We could expect to see growth anywhere between 9-12% for the entire market and within that our challenge is going to be how we grow ahead of the market."

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The storm has already passed for Britannia - one of the country's leading food company that saw some of its most difficult years between 2005 and 2008 on account of increased competitive pressures. But Britannia is not out of the woods entirely as yet and that's because it continues to face pressure on both the market share as well as the profitability front. This week on the show 'Riders in the Storm' we tell you about how Britannia hopes to capture pole position in India's growing food market.

Bread and butter are quite literally Vinita Bali's bread and butter. Well actually bread, butter, milk, dahi, cake, rusk, and most importantly biscuits. And it's a sweet life. The last couple of years, while businesses across the world were nearing size zero, Britannia showed healthy appetite.
Vinita Bali, MD of Britannia puts the growth in context, "Britannia's growth, for the last four years, on compound annual basis has been 22%. When the gross domestic product (GDP) growth is 9.5% it is one thing, but when the GDP growth is going to be moderate 6-6.5%, we do see our business and our sector continuing to grow but not at the 22% rate that we have seen in the last four years."

Bali goes on to add, "We could expect to see growth anywhere between 9-12% for the entire market and within that our challenge is going to be how we grow ahead of the market."

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Vinita Bali, Neeraj Chandra and Raju Thomas on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What is it likely to be because I know in Q4 of the previous fiscal, in fact revenue growth came down to 10% whereas it was above 20% in the first three quarters of that fiscal so are you likely to see it around 10-12% for the next three to four quarters till the uncertainty element is out of the way?

Bali: As I have said before, I never give forward looking forecast, but I can give a general view of the market. If you look at our industry, it would be fair to say that we could expect to see growth anywhere between 9-12% for the entire market and within that our challenge is going to be how we grow ahead of the market.

Q: How maintainable is that in the face of rising input costs as well as increasing taxability because I think some of the tax exemption that you were getting in the Uttarakhand plant or facility are now decreasing over the period of time is what I understand. So that is also going to put pressure on your bottomline?

Bali: I think we are definitely not seeing the kind of inflation we saw in '06-'07 and for the most part of '08 for example if we look at the wheat flour; wheat flour today is the same that we were buying last year and you know wheat harvest or wheat output has been very good in India, so we expect wheat prices to stabilize, if not marginally decline. I think the key ingredient which is having inflationary impact is sugar and there is a shortage in terms of sugar production in our country and also in the world. So sugar prices which are ruling currently at about Rs 25-26 were in the region of Rs 17 last year, so sugar is in an inflationary mode. Prices of oil are actually almost stable. We will feel a little bit of impact in the dairy prices, so a long way of saying that the inflation that we have seen in '06 is not going to repeated in the next year. We will see a moderate rate of inflation.

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