10,000 Jobs Likely to Get Cut at Parle Due to Declining Sales

After the shutdown of Jet Airways, another Indian iconic brand, Parle Products Pvt Ltd, is likely to reduce employees due lack of economic output and descending demands. Parle Products Pvt Ltd, is reducing over 10,000 workers, a company executive said as per a report presented by Business Standard. The decline of third largest economy in Asia has been reducing the amount of sales from everything that is possible. Also, the company hopes that some financial aid would be initiated by the Indian government.

Mayank Shah, category head at Parle lamented that the diminishing sales of Parle biscuits has taken the edge off in production, which will lead to dismissal of 8,000-10,000 workers. "The situation is so bad, that if the government doesn't intervene immediately ... we may be forced to eliminate these positions," he said in an interview taken by Business Standard. Parle was established in 1929, gradually had 1,00,000 employees inclusive of direct and contract workers in across 10,000 company-owned facilities.

According to Shah, the condition of Parle-G biscuits has become worse since 2017, after implication of GST (goods and service tax). This has forced the company to levy charges even on Rs.5 biscuit pack. This situation has negatively resulted in amount of biscuits packed in per pack, affecting the demand of lower-income target audience from rural region. "Consumers here are extremely price-sensitive. They're extremely conscious of how many biscuits they are getting for a particular price," Shah said. Implication of higher taxes made Parle Company have a talk with former finance minister Arun Jaitley and with government’s GST council to review tax rates.

Nielsen, the global data Analytics Company has put forth that the India’s consumer goods industry’s spark is diminishing as the investment in rural market has reduced and small manufacturers couldn’t sustain in competition with giant manufacturers.

Beside, Parle another biscuit company which has also affected is Britannia. The major competitor mentioned that the consumers have second thought about buying the product. "Obviously, there is some serious issue in the economy," Varun Berry, managing director of Britannia Industries Ltd said on a conference call with analysts. Shares in Britannia were down 1.5%, as of 11.50 IST, having fallen as much as 3.9% earlier on Wednesday.