After launching Sofit Protein Cookies on Wednesday, Hershey India, a part of The Hershey Company, is aiming to capture a big slice of the premium cookies market in India.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18's Priya Sheth, Herjit Bhalla, managing director, said, "It's going to be manufactured with our manufacturing partner based in Hyderabad. We are going to go national and it's not a phased launch. The product is going to be available in all general stores and across ecommerce websites."

Bhalla said, "The biscuits category in urban India is almost $2.8 billion and it's growing at 10 percent. Hershey is going to focus on premium portfolio and premium biscuits is almost $800 million. It's growing at a much faster clip of 17 percent. So, there is this whitespace for a cookie to exist, which gives the benefit of protein."

Further he said Hershey holds leading positions in almost every category that the company operate in, "All our brands have a significant contribution. So, both Hershey's and Sofit are brands that we are using to build relevance across the snacking portfolio. Sofit over the last 10 years has been growing at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 20 percent."

First Published:Nov 14, 2018 8:03 PM IST