Marico turned a baked-snack failure into Saffola Masala Oats, ~80% of segment (interview)
In an ETBrandEquity interview, Harsh Mariwala recounts how a failed baked snack rewrote Marico's product playbook and produced the savoury oats leader.
What was changed
Interviewed for ETBrandEquity's 'The F Word' series, Marico founder and chairman Harsh Mariwala recalled the baked-snack bet that failed: about 18 years earlier, Saffola — a brand built on heart health — launched Zest baked snacks as a healthier answer to India's fried-snack aisle. 'We were convinced we were solving a real consumer problem,' he said. Trial numbers were respectable, but repeat purchases never came; consumers simply found the product not tasty enough. 'In food, "okay" is not good enough,' Mariwala said, and Marico withdrew it.
The failure rewired how the company read consumers. When Marico entered the oats category — then dominated by Quaker and Bagrry's with sweet positioning — its research showed Indian breakfasts are savoury. This time the R&D team spent far more time testing flavours directly with consumers while developing the product, down to regional nuances in spice tolerance.
The result, per Mariwala, was an entirely new segment: Saffola Masala Oats commands roughly 80% of India's savoury oats market (self-reported in the interview), has expanded the overall oats category, and even lifted Saffola's share in plain oats. 'The baked snacks failure forced us to go much deeper into consumer insight,' he said. 'That changed the way we approached product development.'
Why it worked
Health positioning won trial but taste drives repeat snacking; the team had optimised for the wrong variable.
Consumer research showed Indian breakfasts are savoury, so oats were repositioned rather than copied from Western sweet formats.
Flavour testing moved inside product development itself, with regional spice preferences shaping the recipe.
Mariwala credits a culture that separates careless failure from intelligent failure, keeping experimentation alive.
What can be applied
In food, taste beats the strategic story: a health brand's failed snack taught Marico to test flavour with consumers first — and the fix created a whole new segment.
Aftermath
The same interview carried Mariwala's second lesson: Marico's acquisition of Sundari, supermodel Christy Turlington's Ayurvedic spa brand, clashed with its FMCG DNA — a B2B spa model it exited after two to three years. Marico redirected its international strategy toward FMCG brands in emerging markets with India-like distribution, building businesses in Egypt, Vietnam and South Africa; international markets now contribute close to 28% of the company's revenue, also self-reported in the interview.