Maggi’s 40-Year Journey in India

In 2022, Maggi, the noodles company, completed its 40 years of operations in India. The unparallel success of a product like Maggi noodles, that too in a country like India, has a lot to offer to learn for the business aspirants.

In this article, I’m walking you through the history of Maggi in India. You will also learn about the strategic and effective solution the company had in their store when things didn’t go as they should.

Maggi was new only to India

Just like how ‘Xerox’ is used for ‘Photocopiers’ and ‘Colgate’ is for ‘Toothpaste’, Maggi is used as a synonym for Noodles.

The concept of instant noodles was new to India when Maggi was launched here in 1982. This idea was already an established model of business in the western world. It was running successfully in Switzerland, the country of origin of Maggi, and a number of European countries.

When they introduced Maggi in India, Nestle, the parent company, already had a strong supply network, and was dealing with multiple food items.

Nestle made a blunder by copying their exact modus operandi

• Maggi products were introduced in Switzerland by Julius Maggi in the year 1882, exactly a century before they were made available for Indians. Working women were the only targeted consumers. The name had already become an integral part of the lives of millions of middle-class working families when Nestle acquired Maggi in 1947.
• When it was introduced in India, there were a number of challenges faced by the company. The most important one was the eating habit of Indians.
• Back in the western world, Maggi was considered an alternative for Breakfast and Lunch. But here in India, Rice and Chapatis (Rotis) were so ingrained in the lifestyle of people that it was almost impossible to gain acceptance for a strange food product.
• The greatest blunder they did here was advertising Maggi as an alternative for Breakfast and Lunch which was beyond imagination for Indians. Positioning Maggi as an instant food for working women added to the blunder – The Business was at standstill.
• The company had to look for ways to make Indians accept the product.

Maggi worked on introducing a new habit in the subcontinent

• Maggi learnt a lesson from the blunders it made in its nascent stage. Understanding the geo-socio-economical aspects of the potential consumers must be the top priority before coming up with an entirely new product.
• Maggi made a brilliant step by rethinking and reinventing the marketing strategy by exclusively crafting one for India. India wasn’t a region that would easily give up on its food habits which were being followed for centuries. Moreover, Indians had a different taste for food than their western counterparts.
• Indians gave more space for spices and masalas in their food, something unusual for a westerner.
• However, the company wanted to cultivate the consumption of Maggi among Indians to grow its business. The only way was to scrutinize the daily routines of Indian middle-class families and identify a loophole so as to entrench their business.
• There weren’t many. Yet, they identified an effective one and set out on a journey to successfully implement it.

The intensive marketing strategy of Maggi

• Since there wasn’t a space to occupy the breakfast, lunch or dinner tables of Indians, Maggi settled for evening snacks.
• Unlike breakfast and lunch, where Indians had a stronghold of dishes, the category of evening snacks lacked a variety of dishes. People had few choices and those choices were alterable.
• Maggi started positioning themselves as an evening snack rather than a full meal. This paradigm shift worked really well. The 2-minute cooking time was also projected heavily which added to the success saga.
• Maggi shifted its focus from working women to school-going children. Targeting this category was apparently easy and worked extremely well. As a result, the entire middle class and the upper middle-class sector had Maggi as a household name.

The effective marketing strategies used by Maggi

• This was quite fast in identifying and fixing the problems they faced. Implementation of a number of proven marketing strategies fetched them good results.
• Maggi did extensive marketing campaigns based in schools in India. Free trial packets were disbursed among children which offered a great business in return.
• Noodles never compromised with the taste factor. The taste retained existing customers and paved the way for new customers through word of mouth.
• There were creative advertisements running on TV about Maggi being so simple and less time-consuming to prepare. The ‘2-minute cooking’ concept went really well with the consumers.
• Since Nestle already had a robust supply chain, it was made sure that is available at each and every retail shop in India. (To your knowledge – Nestle India was incorporated in 1959 and had multiple products in the market)
• Mothers of school-going children found Maggi to be a great solution for a long-term problem they were tackling with. When the children were back home the mothers had to prepare some evening snacks which meant they had to spend a considerable amount of time and effort. This solved this problem using their ‘2-minute cooking’ strategy.
• The company efficiently used all media outlets of that time to reach out to each and every potential customer. Company advertisement was very common in print and visual media. Notably, Maggi sponsored the then-famous TV show – Hum Log in Doordarshan.

Key takeaways from the story of Maggi

Though Maggi went through a phase full of blunders and mistakes It clearly identified the issues and came up with a more effective solution.

Before coming up with any new product do study the socioeconomic and cultural constraints prevalent in the targeted consumers.

All products demand region-specific attention to be successful. The marketing strategy used by Nestle to promote this is entirely different from what they used in other countries.

Habits and the Psychology of end consumers play a vital role in determining the success level of any business. Pay attention to finding out ways to become a part of the lifestyle of your end customers.

Finally and most importantly, do try to bring in value in exchange for the money you expect from your business.

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