You might just get a strong rebuttal against your mom stopping you from having pizzas. This article might act as a gateway to your regular, unhindered access to pizzas. Your nearby pizzeria might officially become your favorite place to hang out. Before you delve further into your fantasies, before your taste buds start jumping in delight, I must tell you that pizza is definitely not the food your body needs (my health – consciousfriends will vouch for it)!
Nevertheless, it definitely wouldn’t hurt one to be in the Pizza business. How? Let me serve it to you slice – by – slice!
Western culture and its fanaticism in India brought about uncountable transitions in the daily habits of Indians. The country was content with having Chhole Kulche and Paneer Rolls for evening snacks but Pizza managed to forge its way, and that too for all good, delicious reasons. So much so that the pizza market that had a consumption rate of just 50 thousand pizzas per day in the year 2000 now experiences a daily sale of an upwards of 1.5 million pizzas! And these numbers cover only the organized market. Pizza entered the rural and semi – urban India only few years ago and the demand is increasing by the day as pizza continues to strike a chord with the young rural/ semi urban India.
I know you are still wondering if the numbers are correct. There is a great chance they are not. There is no precise data available as on date that tells us about the actual consumption rate of pizzas in India. However, the big daddy of Indian Pizza Market, Domino’s Pizza, claims of having a humongous 70% share, as of April 2020. In an old interview from the year 2014, the then Vice President of Jubilant Foodworks Ltd (the company that runs Domino’s Pizza in India) stated that the company sold, on an average, close to 4,00,000 pizzas daily. Several statistics show that the pizza market grew at a CAGR of around 26% in the past five years. Applying this CAGR, we can estimate the number of pizzas sold daily to be in the range of 15 to 16 Lakh. Whoa! That’s definitely a healthy data.
Despite the fact that these are mere estimations and the coronavirus pandemic has severely impacted this business as well, craze for pizza hasn’t really succumbed to anything. The numbers may be unbelievable but are definitely not overstated.
Besides, pizzas in India are priced lower than most of the world to suit the target market and facilitate greater consumption. Highly competitive pricing strategy coupled with unending offers and discounts entice consumers to consume more. While there is doubt that greater consumption results in a healthier you, the industry is growing healthy and this is expected to get better (for the industry, certainly not you!) in times to come.
The average price per unit hovers in the range of Rs 100 to 120. One and a half million pizzas satisfy the taste buds of the Indian consumers daily. In a week, the number comes to 10.50 million, viz., roughly 0.80% of the total population.
By serving less than 1% of Indian population, players in this industry make more than Rs 125 Crore. That’s just one week’s revenue. Monthly revenue amounts to over Rs 500 Crore. The industry sees an inflow of over Rs 6,000 Crore annually. The growth is expected to sky rocket when the pandemic subsides, and why not?!
Major players like Domino’s Pizza have recently reported an EBITDA margin of 24% and PAT margin of 10%. These figures, in times as harsh as these, incentivize entry in this market. However, there have been long standing rivalries among the top players not just in India but internationally. This jeopardizes the survival of new entrants, giving them very little or no room to enjoy the game.
Spectators to the emergence of “pizza – current” in India opine that the tide is here to stay. Pizza, today, is a go – to food for the youngsters. It is, perhaps, the best thing that could ever happen to a wheat flour dough!
Pizza, consumed frequently for prolonged periods, has adverse effects on human body that are not unknown to anyone, yet the pleasure it gives to eyes and tongue clearly outweighs its harms, and the pizza giants are biggest beneficiaries of our ignorance. That being said, the product is unidirectionally rallying towards a single product industry.
Also, just like foreign enterprises made it big in India by benefitting from the changing taste and preferences, it’s time for India to establish a pizza brand abroad. An industry expert once jokingly exclaimed, “If we can have the possibility of an Italian as a prime minister in India, surely we can also dream of an Indian pizza joint in Italy!”
By: Priyanshu Shukla, Kolkata, West Bengal
