In June 2024, Mondelez agreed to manufacture, market, distribute and sell the Lotus Biscoff biscuit brand in India. Earlier this week, the two formally announced the launch of the brand in the country.
Jan Boone, chief executive officer of Lotus Bakeries, said the company plans to make its flagship Biscoff biscuit the number three brand in the world, with India playing a key role in its ambitions.
Global chocolate and biscuit maker Mondelez’s Oreo is the world’s largest-selling cookie brand.
“We have set our ambition to become the number three cookie in the world. The number one is clearly Oreo. If we want to become a global brand, India has to be part of it, and we could not have conquered India on our own. There are so many retail stores, the distribution is very complex, and we needed a partner like Mondelez to create a brand in India,” Boone said in a virtual interaction with the press on Thursday.
In addition to growing Biscoff in India, the two companies will work together to develop and market co-branded chocolates. The move will help Mondelez—the Perk and 5 Star chocolate maker—expand its premium cookie portfolio in the country.
Lotus Bakeries, founded in 1932, sells brands such as Lotus Biscoff and Kiddylicious. It operates in over 50 countries with revenues of €1.06 billion in 2023. It counts the US as its top market, followed by the UK and France.
“Hopefully, India will become one of the top three countries for Biscoff,” he said.
The India biscuits market size reached about ₹39,500 crore in 2024, per estimates by research firm IMARC Group. It expects the market to reach around ₹69,000 crore by 2033, at a compounded annual growth rate of of 5.9%. India snacks market size is expected to swell to ₹1.01 trillion by 2033, from ₹46,571.3 crore in 2024.
Currently, Biscoff will be sold at ₹10 for a single serve. Homegrown Parle Products sells its flagship Parle G glucose biscuits for as low as ₹2. “So it’s a premium cookie. The overall pricing will be indexed at about 2.3 to 2.4 times the market average, in the region of about ₹450 a kilo,” said Samir Jain, president, India, Mondelēz International.
Mondelez, which primarily started selling chocolates in India, was a late entrant in India’s biscuit market, with Oreo launched in 2011.
As a result, its share in the biscuit market is still small compared to incumbents such as Parle, Britannia and ITC Ltd. In India, a bulk of its business comes from chocolate brands such as Cadbury Dairy Milk, Cadbury 5 Star and Perk. It also sells powdered beverages such as Tang and Bournvita.
In 2022, Dirk Van de Put, chairman and chief executive officer at Mondelez International, had said the company expects annual revenues from India to climb to $2 billion by 2030, growing from the current $1.2 billion.
Analysts said large homegrown biscuit players have sufficiently covered both the mass and premium ends of the market, making it hard for multinationals to crack the market immediately.
“We don’t see the entry of a new player having any impact on Britannia and ITC—because the pricing is on the higher side. Most existing players have also premiumized their portfolios. We think multinationals have been slow to scale up versus domestic companies. We expect the market will continue to be dominated by Britannia and Parle,” said Abneesh Roy of Nuvama Institutional Equities.
On royalty and commercial terms of the agreement with Mondelez, Boone said: “We cannot disclose any details… the only thing we can say is that it has a long-term perspective. It’s not a matter of working together for a couple of years—it will continue for a really long time,” said Boone.
Meanwhile, Mondelez International reported net revenues of about $36 billion in 2024. It is known for brands such as Oreo, Ritz, LU, Clif Bar, Tate’s Bake Shop, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Milka and Toblerone.
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