To deal with the crisis, Parle began producing barley biscuits. Parle had to halt production of his gluco biscuits because as wheat was the primary ingredient. India was left with only 63% of its wheat cultivation area after Partition and there was an immediate shortage of wheat in the country. 400 million Parle-G biscuits are produced daily, and if a month’s production of the biscuits is stacked side by side, the distance between the Earth and the Moon can be covered.In 1947, India gained independence and Pakistan was partitioned that year.The amount of sugar used to make 13 billion Parle-G biscuits - 16,100 tons - can cover the streets of the world’s smallest city, the Vatican City.If you line up all the Parle-G biscuits consumed annually, end to end, you can go around the Earth 192 times.Here’s some interesting trivia to end the story of the world’s largest selling biscuit! Maybe that’s the reason this humble glucose biscuit has retained its special place in the heart of all Indians, despite new biscuits entering the market every other day. It is also the only brand that is easily available at places like a village of 100 people near the LoC. It is consumed by people from every strata of society from a person sitting in an urban high rise to a person in the smallest of towns. Nonetheless, despite its swift growth and heavy demand, the brand has remained true to its philosophy. For example, Farzi Cafe has invented a Parle G cheesecake and Mumbai’s 145 has a Parle G Eatshake! In fact, the biscuit is so popular that some restaurants have started using it to make high-end desserts. To avoid duplication by small biscuit-makers (who sold their low-quality biscuits in a similar yellow wax paper), the packaging material was change to low-cost printed plastic. This prompted the management to rechristen the biscuit and see if it helped it stand out from the crowd.Īnd so in 1982, Parle Gluco was repackaged as Parle G, with the ‘G’ standing for glucose, of course. However, while the new packaging clicked with the biscuit’s target audience - kids and their mothers, it still failed to decisively distinguish Parle Gluco from the horde of “me-too” glucose biscuit brands in the market. The new packaging was a yellowish wax-paper wrapper with a plump little girl imprinted on it (an illustration by Everest Brand Solutions), along with the brand name and company’s red-coloured logo. To battle the flood of knock-offs, the firm decided to create a packaging that would be unique to Parle Gluco while patenting its own packing machinery. Confused by similar brand names, most people would just ask shopkeepers for glucose biscuits. For instance, Britannia launched its first glucose biscuit brand, Glucose D, and had it endorsed by Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan’s avatar in Sholay). In 1960, Parle Products started feeling the pinch when other players in the market began launching their own glucose biscuits. In an ad saluting Indians who had sacrificed their lives for the freedom of their motherland, Parle urged its consumers to make do with barley biscuits till wheat supplies were restored to normal. However, in 1947, a severe shortage of wheat (India was left with only 63% of its wheat cultivation area after Partition) immediately after Independence meant that the production of Parle Gluco biscuits had to stop for a while. It was also much-in-demand by the British-Indian army during World War II. Made in India, meant for Indian palates and accessible to every Indian, the humble biscuit quickly became popular with the public.
It was to counter this trend that Parle Products launched Parle Gluco as an affordable source of nourishment for the common masses. United Biscuits, Huntly & Palmers, Britannia and Glaxo were the prominent British brands that ruled the market. Even as the bugle for World War II was sounded in 1939, the company baked its first biscuit.īack then, biscuits were mostly imported, expensive and meant for consumption by the elite classes. However, it was only 10 years later that it began its biscuit making operations. Parle’s first product was an orange candy that was soon followed by other confectioneries and toffees.
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