French food products corporation Danone has evinced plans to bring its international range of child nutrition products to India, in a bid to cater to the rising demand among Indians, for solutions to conditions in children such as IEM (Inborn Errors of Metabolism), and allergies, among other issues.
According to Rodrigo Lima, Managing Director of Danone India, “As a nutrition company, we are evaluating the conditions to get the right products to India. Currently, we are observing demand for products to serve as solutions for allergies and IEM in babies and children, among others, and will be introducing over 10 products from our international range, which will hit the market by the middle of 2017.”
Going forward, while some of the products will be imported, the company is looking at local manufacturing as well.
Danone acquired Wockhardt’s nutrition arm in 2012, and took over brands Protinex, Farex, and Dexolac, which are sold under the Nutricia banner here. Today, Danone India, which also has presence in the dairy space as well, derives 90% of its revenues from the nutrition market.
“Today, we cater to two aspects of the market, namely infant formula and nutritional supplements. The organised market in the country for these two products is to the tune of €1 billion, growing at over 5% year-on-year,” Lima told DH.
Referring to trends in the Indian market, he said that the approach is traditional, but times are slowly changing. “People have misconceptions about packaged food. But a lot of R&D goes into addressing special needs. We understand nutrition and work on perfecting our formula, to benefit Indian tastes. Even physicians understand the science and relevance of our products,” Lima said.
IEM forms a large class of genetic diseases involving congenital disorders of metabolism. The condition lacks timely diagnosis in India, where new-born screening is rare. On November 24, FSSAI came out with a new notification, allowing import of certain ‘special diets’, predominantly for medical purposes. Danone is aiming at 20% growth this year in India, en route to doubling its nutrition business by 2019.
