Milo: Climbing the Stairs of Childhood- By Garima Katariya

 

I still remember during my childhood my favourite was Milo due to it’s exciting gifts with each product. I can still remember when I was in class 3, I got a complete set of cricket equipment and I was very happy to have it. I still remember we used to get free Milo samples in school from Nestle, and also participated in various competitions organized by them. But today’s generation cannot understand the emotions we were having with Milo.

Milo is a chocolate and malt powder typically mixed with hot water or milk (or both) to produce a beverage.  It was developed by Thomas Mayne in Sydney in 1934. The beverage derives its name from the Greek athlete 'Milo of Crotona,' after his legendary strength. It is owned by Nestle and came into the market in Australia in the year 1934. It was very popular in the cities of Australia and New Zealand. It came into the Indian market in the year 1996. It entered into the market with great advertisements, sales push and promotional activities like free sample distribution in schools, exciting gifts with the packets of Milo and it was initially very successful in penetrating Indian market.

Milo had positioned itself as a brown beverage which tests sweet and chocolaty. Through it’s advertising campaign it had positioned itself as a sportsman friendly health drink. It tried to convince Indian mothers that health is most important wealth an they can use Milo to make their children healthy.

In Indian beverages market there was highly competitive in Indian beverages market as there were well established brands like Bournvita from Cadbury, Horlics from GSK present. So, from the beginning this competition was tough for Nestle. Nestle had tried and was initially successful but every success was result of heavy push and promotion. This way Nestle had invested a lot of money in promotion but not put that much concentration on research and development activities. So, when other brands were able to offer a wide range product flavors, Milo had only one.

Milo was not able to retain its market share in front of it’s competitors like Bournvita and Boosts. So, after some initial years Milo fell way behind in the 'brown beverage' market category and this particular category was also not doing good at that point of time. Due to poor packaging and no innovation Milo lost trust in the minds of customers and consumers whereas competitors had diversity in packaging (bottles pouches cans etc).

 

 

 The market leaders in the malted foods category overall are Horlicks, Bourvita and Complan, in that order. Horlicks has a 56% market share in the Rs 1,800-crore category. While Horlicks is marketed by (GSK) but now it is taken by HUL, Bournvita is from Cadbury's and Complan from Heinz. Milo has been steadily losing market share to competition from Boost, also a HUL brand, and Bournvita. HUL and Cadbury's have been pushing their brands aggressively. Declining sales and failure to capture market share led to Nestlé’s withdrawal of Milo from the market in the year 2009.

After a long time after withdrawal of Milo from Indian market, it remains close to my heart and whenever I climb back the stairs of childhood, I can feel the taste of Milo and I am waiting to drink it abroad.