Top Ramen Noodles is the second most sold instant noodles in India after the noodle market leader, Maggi.

Maggi has been the highest sold noodles in India. We may get tempted to think that Maggi is a brain child of India. But nope. It is a product of Nestle Brand. Maggi was invented in Europe by a person named Maggi.

Top Ramen Noodles is a non-Indian brand, belongs to Japanese company, Nissin Foods. Nissin claims that their company's founder was also the invented instant noodles in 1958, inspired by the plight of people suffering from lack of food. Instant Noodles became a hit all over the world since its invention.

So what are the reasons that Top Ramen Noodles could not match up with the growth of Maggi Noodles in India?

What are the steps Top Ramen Noodles is taking to get a bigger share of Instant noodles market in India?

What should Top Ramen Noodles do now to get to the number uno position?

Here are my thoughts:

One major factor for Maggi's success was its quick localization. I have been eating Maggi since my childhood, for about 15 years, I never knew that Maggi was a foreign brand until I read wikipedia just before writing this article. How many times had I seen the wrapper of Maggi Noodles packet? Many times! I like reading everything that's written on wrapper's, in fact it's my hobby that I don't even know about consciously.

So Maggi has a simple presentation of itself to people in India. Every common Indian knows the tagline of maggi - 2 minute noodles. And Maggi was famous in the flavor of Masala. Masala happens to mean spice in India. So to a common Indian, Maggi Masala sounds very logical and Indian.

Never did Maggi put any fancy English tag lines nor did it endorse its product as a foreign brand though it could have. It's almost like they hid their real identity of being a foreign brand simply by not revealing the fact neither in ads nor in the wrapper or anywhere else.

The ads that endorsed Maggi in the Television picture, a small girl and a boy waiting eagerly for her mom to cook and serve Maggi. Once served, they happily eat their meal and go to play. To add, there was no hint of foreign hand in the brand.

So they kind of Indianized Maggi, established as a brand that every Indian can identify with and buy that product without any hesitation.

Coming back to Top Ramen, the first big mistake was that it entered Indian market late, maybe a couple of decades after Maggi came. (This is my assumption, I remember that Top Ramen was always available since my childhood, but I have a feeling that Top Ramen came later). So, they lost the early customers of the newly found food, instant noodles in India.

The Second mistake that Top Ramen did was they never considered localization in the early stages. They were proudly boasting a funky English Tag line "Don't be a noodle, be a smoodle". This does not connect with an average Indian who speaks native Hindi.

The Third mistake that Top Ramen did was to name the base flavor as "Macho Masala" instead of just "Masala", which means spice in Hindi. To be honest, I didn't know the exact meaning of macho until I looked up the dictionary. They thought that the young generation would be pretty impressed with a fancy name. What their marketing team could not see was that it was not children who usually buy noodles, but it was home makers who buy noodles and cook for their kids. Such a basic!!!

I recently bought Top Ramen noodles and have observed many changes in the wrapper. Top Ramen surely seems to have realized, though late, that they are lagging behind in localization, in connecting with the local public. They have taken few corrective measures such as renaming the flavor from "Macho Masala" to "Masala".

Smoodles has been renamed to Smooth Noodles, again, they might have thought smoodles sounds cool, but they have missed a point. House wives may not understand that smoodles means noodles. And they might come to a conclusion that this is not an Indian brand.

They have a clear highlight in the wrapper design that reads "PRODUCT OF INDIA".

Top Ramen noodles has come up with a competitive price tag of just Rs. 9/- in comparison with the present price of Maggi, Rs. 10/-

I would suggest Top Ramen Noodles to endorse their product with popular Indian celebrities, such as Preity Zinta or the younger Katrina Kaif, or Deepika Padukone. They should remove the section that boasts of Top Ramen Noodles as a brain child of its founder from Japan. Push really really hard into the market to catchup with Maggi.

Their target market is the city and town crowd of India. It may take many years before Top Ramen can become a household name like Maggi, they may never be able to reach Maggi's position too!