Established in 1964, Nebico Biscuit Pvt Ltd is one of the first biscuit and confectionary manufacturers in Nepal. Now it is one of the very few companies in Nepal to complete 50 years of suc­cessful operations. Today, Nebico’s products are house­hold names. Gandhi Chhetri, general manager of Nebico, who joined the company a year ago after working for many national and international FMCG brands, talked to Sunny Mahat of APEX about Nebico’s future plans.

What do you think is the secret to the company’s longevity?

Consistency is the key. We have been manufacturing top-quality products without any deterioration in our quality. But we have also not seen expected growth in the market. The main products of Nebico—Glu­cose, Thin Arrowroot and Coconut biscuits—are established and well known. There is another biscuit called “Khaja” which we have been manufacturing for the past 50 years. There are generations of people who recognize Nebico as a brand. But we have not been able to cater to younger consumers.

 

What is stopping you?

We’ve had a problem with Research & Development as well as with technology. We have failed to innovate in order to cater to the young crowd. The choices of the youngsters are evolving and we have not been able to attract them with new products. But our strat­egy is changing. We are launch­ing new products aimed at young consumers and are also develop­ing products for health conscious consumers, while also retaining existing consumers.

 

What has been the company’s biggest opportunities and chal­lenges during its long run?

Let me start with the chal­lenges. We as a company feel sandwiched. Multi-national com­panies from India, China and abroad are coming up with high quality products. On the other hand, local Nepali products have lower prices. We are fighting in the middle. We cannot go down on prices because we have to be profit­able. At the same time, we have not been able to climb up due to lack in R&D and innovation.

As for the opportunities, we have strong goodwill and brand recogni­tion all over the country. Our dis­tribution network is also probably the strongest in the industry with an all-Nepal supply chain. Besides that, we have a good range of products and our re-sellers/trad­ers and consumers are satisfied with our quality.

Our employees are also our big strength. We have peo­ple who have spent their lives working with us with utmost dedication, and have become part of one big fam­ily. Where else in Nepal would you find employees with such low turnover? Some of them have been working with us for past 35 years.

 

Since Nepal is an open market, how difficult is it to compete with imported products?

We don’t consider European prod­ucts our competition because they are very expensive and have only a niche market. The Indian products are our main competitors but we do not get into price wars with them. There are Indian products with sim­ilar prices but we have the advantage of having more content, i.e. more net weight. Suppose if they are selling a packet of biscuit for Rs 10 with 100 gms of content, we will have the same price but the content will be 120 gms. This is a big factor behind purchase decisions, especially in rural areas.

 

What are the immediate Nebico’s plans for market expansion?

Nebico is a 55-year-old company and we reached a turnover of around Rs 1 billion last fiscal. But this is not enough for a company of our stature. We need to bring adolescents and the youth into our basket and we are definitely looking into increasing our presence in this market.

We are also launching some high range products to compete with imported goods. Also, we are thinking of expanding the business to North East India (Seven Sisters States), because we know they have a huge market for Nepali products. We are already negotiating with importers there.