Domino's has 70% of the pizza market share in India but Murugan S Narayanswamy, senior vice president, marketing, Domino’s Pizza India, tells Praveena Sharma the American pizza company's focus was on growing pizza consumption, which is still low in the country.
The landscape of quick service restaurants (QSR) market in India could transform drastically with fat tax, portion control, meat ban and other such things being looked at, how will all this affect Domino's marketing strategy?
The way we look at the market is it will grow when the pizza penetration or consumption grows. This has always been our strategy.
For this, we always look at what is our core strength, which is pizza, delivery, and, now because of the environment in India, digital and ecommerce business have also become core for us.
Fat tax and meat ban look like imminent reality, will we see Domino's changing its Pizza menu because of that?
We keep consumers as the focus point of all our initiatives. We only look at what the consumer is asking. We have a very robust method of customer feedback, whether it is an innovation or change in mobile application or change in customer service at Dine-in.
One of Domino's winning strategies is value for money, how are you maintaining that in a stiffly competitive market?
We are doing that by going after volumes. For this, we are aiding spontaneous pizza ordering. We have launched an offer, where people who order more than two pizzas, we give them a very high value price every day instead of on certain occasions or weekends.
Will we see pizza delivery in India moving from bikes to drone and robot soon?
One core of our marketing strategy is to strengthen our delivery expertise. At the moment, I cannot tell you what all we are doing on that but you can be rest assured that it is a very big area for us.
What are you doing to increase you market share?
In Pizza, we have close to 70% market share but the frequency of pizza consumption among some consumers is still low. If you look at our share in overall QSR– the number of times you eat out – we have a long way to go. We are eyeing a big share in that market. We are trying to grow the pizza pie in the outside-home food market, not just QSR.
What are the challenges for Domino's in India?
First is that with rising culinary awareness among Indians, how do we re-invent our menu? Second, digital is still a challenge in India. Third is grabbing a higher share in the outside-home food market. We are playing the market growth game, not market share game. And, growing the market is always a challenge, especially for the leader.
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