Current Food Market Of India

The growing Indian Food Market with a rate of 8% annually, making it the largest untapped industry alone in India is one of the reason I choose FST as my major. There are not many players in Indian food market. To name some leaders in India it would be ITC, UB group(liquor), Pepsico India and the coca cola co etc. All the products we see in the Indian retail outlets are just a copy of major preservation techniques used in the developed countries. The content is changed the packaging is the same. The leader in packaging industry is no doubt Tetra Pack(we use it every day but still don't realize that we just used a tetra pack and throw it in the bin).
The most recent concept copied form the US and other developed countries is the concept of retail outlets like Wal-Mart and K-Mart in US and Tesco in Europe. Well I predicted, there is going to be trouble when the idea came into existence. Indian is not a monopolistic economy unlike US and UK. Farming and retailing is one occupation still practiced by a majority of the population. Already the farmers were committing suicides, and with the coming of these retail outlets has just elevated the situation. Reliance fresh stores are already facing a lot of opposition in many populated states. the recent news was that reliance laid over 900 people in Uttar Pradesh(UP). The Mayawati government were skeptical about the hundreds and thousands of jobs which will be at stake if the retail chain opens or may be the government was not paid properly by reliance. Similarly protest were observed in Jharkhand and West Bengal. All of these states are major crop producers in India.
the question that arises now is, why did the marketing of the newly opened reliance outlet did not work in these states I would call it miscalculation and poor strategy. Exclude the 10 big metropolitan cities. Then what went wrong in the small and upcoming cities which saw so much protest that reliance had to wind up their business from these states.
The answer is quiet simple.

• People still prefer getting the groceries delivered at their doorstep.

• Retail outlets should set up small shops in every locality so that the retailers don't go out of business and they are franchised by the retail stores to sell their specific product.

• Contract farming at a large scale would have improved the quality and quantity of the product. This way the farmers will not lose their livelihood & their crop will be under apt supervision.

• There are no well defined veg and non-veg sections in the retail outlets. This did withdrew the vegetarian customers from the scene. There should be demarcated and distinct veg and non-veg sections within the facility.

The next rapidly growing industry is the packaged 'Ready to Eat' food and the newly formulated instant gravy for almost all the curries. the business has expanded rapidly and is giving desired results. The preservation techniques are same that are used in US, but the content of the pack has been changed as mentioned previously.