Nestle India to double rural sales network

Nestle introduced a powered heath drink under the Milo brand on Monday. The company expects its out-of-home category, where, Nestle operates in segments as coffee vending machines and some of the Maggi products, become a growth driver. “Today we have a fairly robust rural plan. We cover 52,000 villages directly in our distribution plan and are looking to double that in 2-3 years,” Nestle India Chairman and Managing Director Suresh Narayanan said.

Presently, Nestle India gets around 20-25 per cent contribution from the rural market, he added. Nestle India, which had a revenue of Rs 11,292.27 crore in 2018, was the fastest growing market globally for the Swiss FMCG major. “Nestle is having a strong growth. Even in tier II and III towns we are making good progress,” he said adding “we are having double digit growth.”

The company is also encouraged by the growing sales from e-commerce, which is opening new avenues for it. “We have trebled our e-commerce business. We were about 0.5 per cent of total business about 2-3 years ago and today we are crossing 1.5 per cent of total business,” he said.

The company is selling around 30-50 e-coffee machines per day online on Amazon, which costs around Rs 6,000. When asked about the growth, he said it would depend on the infrastructure created by e-commerce players and the government policies for the sector.

“How big it would become, only time would tell. People are expecting this to double to treble in coming years,” he said adding it would also depend a lot on the infrastructure which e-commerce players would be able to create in terms of warehousing, value chain etc.