Mumbai: The India arm of New York-headquartered PepsiCo is a market leader in potato chips and extruded snacks. Despite the dominance in segment, growing heath consciousness among consumers, particularly parent due to the mounting lifestyle issues like obesity issues. As part of its strategy to regionalize its product line-up, PepsiCo has launched crunchy ‘papad’ that is widely consumed with rice and rasam, dal or sambhar, under its Lay’s brand, in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
The US food and beverages giant said it has taken inspiration from handmade and home dried ‘papads’ that are made in cottage industries. Earlier, PepsiCo, within its existing western snacks segment—it had earlier launched Kurkure with gingelly oil since it is popular in south India.
“Lay’s has always been at the forefront of innovating with new formats and variants and our regionalisation strategy is a demonstration of our efforts to build a closer connect with our consumers,” Dilen Gandhi, senior director, marketing for foods category at PepsiCo India, said. “With this launch, we have gone one step further by identifying everyday meal occasions as per regions and coming with a product that compliments the existing tastes and palates.”
The company said it is constantly transforming its snacks portfolio to expand its consumer base and south India is a key market for its foods business.
