Zone Perfect

Zone Perfect is the name of a particular brand of biscuits manufactured by M/s Abbott Laboratories, a multinational organization.  The manufacturers claim that they have a very unique product, in as much as they have been able to put together a good variety of ingredients needed to produce a product of that kind.

All about Biscuit market
However, they are not alone.  The biscuit market in India is worth Rs.12, 000/- crores, and over fifty percent of this market is dominated by one single manufacturer, M/s Britannia Industries.  In fact, this organization has been in the forefront of doing something dramatic, at any point in time.

Some years ago, it brought out the cheapest biscuit brand in India, priced at Rs.3/- apiece.  In fact, this catered to the lowest end of the market, and opened up a huge new market.  Tiger went on to become, in double quick time, the largest selling biscuit brand in India, across all categories.

The new competitors
Of late, a new competitor has entered the scene.  This company – M/s ITC, saw a huge potential in this market.  It has a substitute product of very high quality, for every single brand of the market leader, M/s Britannia.  In fact, ITC has leveraged its superb marketing skills and has emerged as a very viable competitor to M/s Britannia, though the latter is still the market leader and has huge pockets to innovate never like before.  For example, Britannia has now come out with biscuits that are suitable for diabetic patients.  In other words, these biscuits do not have any sugar added to them.

This has also opened up a huge market, as India has one of the fastest growing diabetic populations in the world, mostly due to hereditary reasons.   ITC has gone one step further.  It has dared to take on the might of another huge multinational — PepsiCo, which has a Rs.1000/- crore brand in what is called “Kurkurere”.   This snack is positioned as a snack ideal for evening parties, or just  what Indians famously call as “time pass” – to munch during bus or travel time, or while watching movies or even just while lazily spending their time during weekends.
So, Zone Perfect has competition, if at all the manufacturer plans to enter India.

The catchy phrase “Zone Perfect” might as well be relevant for describing certain developments in India.  For example, South India was considered very slow on many developments.  Not anymore.

In the past ten years, South Zone has emerged as the fastest growing region in India, and Chennai, the gateway of South India, as the capital of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, with the largest pool of trained manpower in India.  Also called the Detroit of India, it houses an auto cluster that is growing day after day, and giving other auto clusters like Pune, the toughest competition.  It also has one of the largest concentrations of IT industries in India. Similar is the case for Bangalore and Hyderabad.  Zone perfect has resonance almost everywhere in India.