How is Parle-G still ₹5?

How is Parle-G still ₹5?

Chai at the tapri is ₹15 now.

Samosa is ₹20.

Your rent went up. Your haircut went up. Even the gym went up.

And that yellow packet is still ₹5.

How?

Because ₹5 is the most a lot of Indians will pay for one packet of biscuits.

Make it ₹7, and they don't buy a smaller pack. They just stop buying.

The company knows this. So it never touches the ₹5.

It changes the weight instead.

In January 2025, reports said Parle planned to make its ₹5 and ₹10 packs about 5% to 10% lighter, and raise prices by about 5% on its other products.

Same ₹5. Thoda halka packet. Kisi ne check hi nahi kiya.

But wheat, sugar and palm oil keep getting costlier.

So if the packet still says ₹5, who is paying that difference?

The company's own numbers answer it.

In FY25, Parle's sales grew about 8.5%, to roughly ₹15,500 crore.

Its profit fell by almost 40%, to around ₹980 crore.

Sales up. Profit down by more than a third.

That is what it costs to keep a price frozen.

Ek aur baat, jo mujhe bhi surprise kar gayi.

Parle-G is the biscuit every Indian grew up with. But in the same year, Britannia sold more, around ₹18,000 crore.

The most famous biscuit in the country is not the one making the most money.

So why hold on to ₹5?

2020 answered that.

During the lockdown, the company said Parle-G had its best sales in about eight decades, and its share of the market went up by around 5%.

When nobody had money, the one thing people could still buy was the ₹5 packet.

The Brutal Reality:

That ₹5 is not emotion. It is their seat in the market.

It keeps Parle in the hands of the buyer that every other brand has written off.

Parle-G is not ₹5 because biscuits are cheap.

It is ₹5 because the day it becomes ₹7, a big part of India stops buying biscuits.

✍🏻 Mantra Joshi

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