India's Processed-Food Market Offers Challenges And Rewards

By:Rina Chandran
Reuters

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

MUMBAI: When Kellogg introduced breakfast cereal to India 14 years ago, it underestimated the tradition of cooked breakfasts.

The few customers for cornflakes ate them with hot milk, because until recently milk was rarely pasteurized in India, and they were disappointed by the soggy results.

Kellogg responded with an extensive advertising campaign and, to adapt to local tastes, introduced products like Basmati rice flakes and mango-flavored cereal. To entice customers, the companies also produced small packs that sold for 10 rupees, or 25 U.S. cents.

"It would be foolhardy for me to say Kellogg has replaced cooked breakfast," said Anupam Dutta, managing director of Kellogg India. "I don't think we can ever hope for that. But we've become a part of the consideration set for breakfast in many Indian homes, and that's a tipping point."

Getting a foothold in India's processed-food market, estimated to be worth $90 billion, requires persistence and a willingness to adapt products to food and cultural preferences, according to analysts.

Rising incomes, more working women, modern stores and greater culinary choices are helping such companies as PepsiCo, Nestlé, Unilever, McDonald's and Yum Brands get a piece of the market.

"Every company that wants a share has to invest heavily, localize extensively and be very patient," Jayanta Roy of the consulting company Frost & Sullivan said. It estimates that only one-third of the processed-food market is controlled by large Indian and multinational companies. The rest is held by regional companies.

Adaptation appears to be essential for success in the sector. PepsiCo, for example, has produced strong sales from ethnic salty snacks and sells aam panna, or green mango nectar, along with its colas.

Nestlé promoted Milkmaid, a condensed milk, as being ideal for traditional Indian sweets. But it had better results with Maggi noodles, a bold step in a country divided between eaters of rice and roti, a flat wheat bread.

Maggi soon became a staple in school lunch boxes, helped by masala, or mixed spices. Nestle recently introduced packaged yogurt, competing with another time-honored tradition, while Danone, along with the Japanese dairy-products maker Yakult Honsha, responded with yogurt probiotic drinks.

A few years ago, Indian and foreign companies struggled to sell packaged foods. But now it is much easier to break into the Indian market because of a younger population, higher incomes, new technologies and a growing middle class, estimated at 50 million households.

Hemant Kalbag of A.T. Kearney, a consulting company, estimates that processed foods will grow at 15 percent annually over the next four years. "We have a young population with higher disposable incomes, living away from the large joint families and seeking greater convenience," Kalbag said.

Dutta, the Kellogg India executive, agreed, saying, "The market's constantly evolving and creating demand for products that you never thought would have had a chance."

Large Indian companies are also seeking a larger share of the market. For example, ITC, India's largest cigarette maker, is broadening its range of instant ethnic foods and pasta, cookies and salty snacks.

"Increasingly, Indian consumption patterns are mirroring global trends such as a preference for protein and for functional foods," Pankaj Gupta of Tata Strategic Management Group said. "So companies can choose to go after the mass market or focus on niche segments which are also viable now."

McDonald's and Domino's Pizza are also adding more vegetarian and ethnic options. McDonald's, which is doubling its outlets in India to nearly 300 this year, does not sell beef products in the country. Half its menu is vegetarian, with popular offerings like the McAloo Tikki Burger, which is essentially a potato patty. It also has more sit-down restaurants for large Indian families and home delivery, a first. Domino's also has an eat-in option in several locations.

Indian companies are imitating these fast-food rivals to attract young customers. For instance, Jumbo King, an Indian fast-food chain, is mass producing vada pav, a spiced potato patty in a bun, using modified cookie-dough machines and temperature-controlled stoves.

"We wanted to give the vada pav a modern look," said Dheeraj Gupta, the head of Jumbo King, which also offers a whole-wheat option. "Our inspiration is clearly McDonald's and Subway."

Despite the opportunity, there are longstanding hurdles. Cumbersome tax rules give an advantage to smaller local companies. And the refrigerated system of transportation and storage is inadequate. Problems in this cold chain result in waste of nearly 40 percent of all fresh produce.

"We need stronger legislation on food safety, more robust supply chains and improvements in the cold chain," Kalbag of A.T. Kearney said.

The government and modern retailers are addressing these issues with new laws on packaging and labeling, as well as greater investment in the supply chain.

Self Heating Technology-My project

Introduction:

The field of food science and technology has a long history of making technologies available form the army to the common people. One such event dates back to 1800 when Napoleon Bonaparte offered a 12,000 franc reward to anyone who could devise a method for the food preservation in order to provide his troops with daily rations in order to keep his armies adequately supplied while on the march [1]. After years of experimentation, Appert submitted his invention and won the prize in 1810. Appert was the first canner history had ever witnessed. In early period the canning industry started with Appert only catering the armies, who would fight at the front lines and could not carry raw food with them due to spoilage hazards. A common man would not use canning in those days as it was expensive and of no use. He would buy vegetables and meat every day to make his food. As time progressed, the civilizations became so involved in work and progress that they could not devote time to cook or buy rations everyday. The canning industry which was limited to catering the army, now opened to civilians also and buying canned food suddenly started making sense. As more and more people bought canned food the competition among canning industry increased and bought the expensive canning technique to fit in the pockets of a common man. We have talked a lot how expensive food preservation and storage technique used by army was eventually used by the common man. The Latest technique used by the army is ‘Self heating soups cans, self heating coffee cans, self heating casseroles (which can have an entire cooked meal in them). [2]

Why People Will Buy Self Heating Technology?

Necessity is the mother of invention. It is this necessity which makes me believes people have more important things in life to do rather than make coffee or heat soup in the microwave. Well everyday we see students buying coffee in coffee baristas standing in line and waiting for their turn to order and then waiting in line to get their coffee. If a person stands in a coffee shop for an average of 10 minutes every day for a cup of coffee he is wasting 61 hours in a year standing and waiting for a cup of coffee. What if the person waiting in line every day would just have bought a self heating 24 pack coffee from the super store. He or she would have saved a lot of time in a year. The customers would just have to twist open the container and the coffee would be heating it self and ready to be consumed as the person drives his car to work.

Other great market would be College students. They live on instant food and frozen meals if they don’t want to go to the dining center or cook meals. When a college student buys food he keeps in mind that the food he buys fits his budget, it should have a good quantity to fill him up and it should not take a lot of effort to cook, at most a microwave heating should cook the meal. The personal preference also breaks the choice whether to buy nutritious food or junk food. I think self heating casseroles; self heating soups can be an excellent choice for college students who don’t cook their meals. Casseroles can hold entire meals.

Self heating meals would be an ultimate answer for adventurers. They can eat meals they can only imagine of eating while on their trek. Self heating meals would be a break through in the way adventures ate food. It is also a good alternate for people who travel abroad and miss food from their country.

Technology involved:

1)The source of the heat for the self heated can is an exothermic reaction that the user initiates by pressing on the bottom of the can. The can is manufactured as three containers. A container for the beverage is mounted on top of a container of calcium oxide (quicklime) that is separated from a container of water by a thin breakable membrane. When the user pushes on the bottom of the can, a rod connected there pierces the membrane, mixing the water and calcium oxide. The resulting chemical reaction releases heat (the heat of hydration of calcium oxide) and thus warms the beverage above it.[3]

2) Another, less effective, way of reaction is copper sulfate and zinc, no gas is produced by this reaction and zinc sulfate and copper is left. Not much heat is produced by this reaction; therefore it is only good if there is a large amount of the reactants and little product. [3]

3) Combination of powdered food grade iron and magnesium, salt, and water. When water is poured on the heater pad (‘HeaterMeals’ food heaters use salt water & MRE heaters use regular water) – the Food Heater releases enough heat to warm-up a pre-cooked meal 100 degrees Fahrenheit in approximately 10 minutes. This technology is used by ‘Innotech’ for their products marketed under the name of heater meals. [4]

4) for flameless heaters used by the army is as follows: When iron metal rusts, it is oxidized by the oxygen present in the air. In the case of the flameless ration heater, the metal used is magnesium. Magnesium is chosen because it is readily oxidized, which is due to its having only two electrons in its valence shell. The magnesium metal is mixed together with a small amount of iron in a pouch. To activate the reaction, a small amount of water is added, and the boiling point of water is quickly reached as the reaction proceeds. The role of iron in the heater is most likely as a catalyst, since it is used in a small amount. In this case, the iron is initially oxidized, and then reduced back to its elemental form as the magnesium is oxidized and sends its two valence electrons to iron.[5]

Discussion Of Problems Faced In Implementing Self Heated Food.

Price- price is one of the factors which restrict the buyers to defense forces and adventurers. This is due to the high manufacturing cost. A 12 pack self heating mocha latte cost $34.99, too expensive for every day consumption by a common man. The retail cost of these self heating containers limit the market to only defense forces. Real potential of this technology can only be realized if the cost is reduced such that it can be bought by a common man from a regular super store and used as an efficient means of preparing meals. The price high because of the heating technique and manufacturing of these containers in United states. [6]

Compatibility - one of the major concerns which might make the make the container easier to carry. Current models available in the market are quiet bulky, the main reason being that the beverage cup not only carries the beverage but also chemical in an outer separate shell. The ‘Ontro’ self heating containers in the market currently come in two sizes 16-oz. (448-g) container that holds 10.5 oz. (294 g) of product. The remaining 5.5 oz. (154 g) is the inner heating cone. A 12-oz. (336-g) version that holds 7 oz. (196 g) of product.[6] The excess weight of the heating chemicals and cone in the container makes them heavier. If this weight can be reduced it will serve the purpose of both civilian and defense.

Discussion Of Proposed Solutions To The Problems Above:

How to reduce the price of these meals? Maybe if we try answer this question in a world which accepts the concept of globalization and automation it is quiet easy. Cost reductions options is to set up the manufacturing plant in a country which has cheap labor and has the resources and infrastructure to support food industries. Countries like China, India, Brazil have the infrastructure, cheap labor and the ability to support modern world food Industries. This is a specialized kind of food product which requires excessive manufacturing inputs and manufacturing a product like this in developing countries will substantially reduce the cost. The other option is to just import the heating component of the container form a above mentioned country where the manufacturing cost is low. The edible content of the container can be filled up in USA for safety concerns. This will greatly reduce the cost of production.

Cheap and Alternate chemicals reactions can be researched which show can achieve a good level of exothermic reaction. The present chemicals used greatly increase the coast of the final product. The cost of materials can also be reduced if we use cheap isolation material which is safe for the consumer to handle and also solves the purpose of heating the container. Materials such as these can be only found if more corporate giants enter the market and more money is invested in researching these kinds of materials.

Future of Self Heating Containers:

In the near future people will be more aware about issues like global warming and this will strongly change the way food will be prepared. May be microwaves will be completely replaced with these self heating technology. Replacement of microwave is quiet possible as it is an appliance which consumes a lot of electricity. With people realizing the value of natural resources, everyone would encouragingly use alternate ways to heat food which causes least amount of harm to the planate.

With more and more innovative designs and more corporate giants like Nestle entering the market. Research for these kinds of self heating products will be taken to the next level. Thermotic Developments (TDL) and Nestle joined the project in 1998 to launch the Thermotic Can. Nestle laboratories provided the all-important input on food technology.[7].

Bibliography:

1. “Appert, Nicholas.” New Standard Encyclopedia 1993 ed.

Can Manufacturers Institute. Dec. 2003.

Nicholas Appert. Brooklyn College. December 2003. .

The History of Can Making. Dec. 2003. http://www.cancentral.com/canc/nontext/history.htm

2. Nosotro, Rit. "GA Foods." Sunmeadow.Net. 2 Apr. 2008 .

3. "Container with Integral Module for Heating or Cooling the Contents." Freepatentsonline. 31 Oct. 1995. 2 Apr. 2008 .

4. "Heating Technology." Heatermeals.Com. 2 Apr. 2008 .

5. Brain, Marshall. "How MREs Work." 15 April 2003. HowStuffWorks.com. 01 April 2008.

6. "Hillside Bevrage Online Store." Ontech. 2 Apr. 2008 .

7. "Self-Heating Can Market Set to Grow." Beveragedaily. 15 May 2002. 2 Apr. 2008 .

The Supermarket and The Second Green Revolution Of India

The country is undergoing a second agricultural revolution--building the infrastructure that connects farm to supermarket.



Emaan Singh Mann is a happy farmer, a rare commodity in India's northern state of Punjab, where overfarming and a falling water table have affected productivity on the broad plains that gave rise to India's Green Revolution of the 1960s.

He's happy because FieldFresh, a new company that plans to become India's first large-scale exporter of produce, has leased 90 acres of his land to grow vegetables that need less water than the wheat, rice, and sugarcane he used to cultivate. FieldFresh will pay him slightly more than the $30,000 a year he was getting, and it hires his tractors as well as pays his workers.

"I might have got out of agriculture," says Mann, 35, who is the son of a prominent local politician and who opened a computer-assisted-design school in nearby Chandigarh 18 months ago as a hedge. Now okra and chilies grown on Mann's land go to a warehouse for cooling, then travel 200 kilometers by road in a refrigerated truck to Amritsar, where they're put on a flight to Britain.

That may not seem a big deal, but for India it is a second Green Revolution, which could become as important as the first.

Until recently, like tens of millions of other farmers, Mann had been forced by law to sell his produce at mandis, a network of local markets originally introduced to protect poor farmers from exploitation but now controlled by cartels of traders, bureaucrats, and moneylenders.

He would be paid the official minimum price or less for his produce, but no one would tell him what vegetable varieties sold well or show any interest in improving quality. The produce would then be sent via other middlemen on a slow and often hot journey to retail customers. En route, according to estimates by agriculture expert Abhijit Sen, a member of India's planning commission, between 30% and 40% of it would rot before it got to market.

With few refrigerated packing centers, no regional distribution network, and an inefficient fleet of trucks, India can't sustain large-scale vegetable production, let alone an export business.

Now market pressure - the potential for export and a rapidly growing domestic demand for reliable produce from new supermarket chains--is driving change.

"Organized supermarkets have to have an organized back end," says Lynn Forester de Rothschild, founder and CEO of E.L. Rothschild, a British investment firm owned by a branch of the Rothschild banking family. E.L. Rothschild is a fifty-fifty investor in FieldFresh with Bharti Enterprises, one of India's two biggest telecom operators, which is planning to set up a nationwide retail chain, probably with Britain's Tesco, as well as an export business.

"There is a compelling case for India to feed the world, using inherent strengths that haven't been exploited at all," says Bharti chairman Sunil Mittal.

FieldFresh leases 4,200 acres on 78 farms in Punjab, producing beans, snow peas, carrots, okra, baby corn and other vegetables for export to Europe and the Middle East. In other parts of India it is buying produce on contract from farmers, guaranteeing to pay market prices, though farmers are free to sell elsewhere. This contract system will probably become FieldFresh's main business model once farmers have learned to produce consistently high-quality crops using new seeds, fertilizers, and techniques the company provides.

The benefits are already visible: "It has had an astounding impact on my village," says Mann, "with more employment and higher family earnings alleviating a lot of social problems - and I'm learning new ways of doing things."

With low wages of $1 to $3 a day in a labor-intensive business, India has a clear cost advantage over many producing countries. But FieldFresh's initial export attempts last year proved disastrous. Fifteen out of 20 containers of grapes, as well as shipments of mushrooms and okra, were wasted because of poor-quality skins, pest attacks, or airport delays.

"It was a learning phase," says Mittal, who has persuaded the government to set up India's first perishable-produce centers at airports in Delhi and Amritsar and to relax lengthy and often corrupt customs procedures.

But even though Tesco is among FieldFresh's overseas buyers, it has not been easy breaking into foreign markets. FieldFresh expects its exports this year to grow to $15 million, after an initial investment of $50 million.

Reliance, one of India's two largest industrial groups, has even bigger plans. In June its chairman, Mukesh Ambani, announced a $5.6 billion multiyear investment in agriculture and retail. He aims to make a new company, Reliance Retail, the dominant player in the sector.

Links are being established with farms on several thousand acres in Punjab, West Bengal, Maharashtra, and elsewhere, with rural centers providing goods for farmers and handling their produce. Supply chains are planned from these hubs to Reliance Retail's outlets, as well as to foreign buyers.

Ambani says he wants to deliver "better returns for the Indian farmer and producer by connecting them directly to Indian and global consumers, and lower prices and better product quality for consumers." He is already growing mangoes on land adjacent to Reliance's oil refinery at Jamnagar and plans to become India's biggest mango exporter, selling 3,600 tons annually within five years

With 77% of India's population relying on agriculture for a living, improvements in efficiency and new markets have the potential to benefit large numbers of people. The initiatives by Bharti, Reliance, and other companies will undoubtedly bring advantages of scale that have largely been missing in a nation where the average land holding is only 2½ acres and 60% of agricultural output is consumed by farmers' families.

But anything that might result in consolidation or in the displacement of farmers from their land is politically sensitive - especially at a time when crop failures and bankruptcy have led to an average of 15,000 farmer suicides annually over the past five years, according to official records. Even Mann's father, Simranjit Singh Mann, who heads a Sikh political party in Punjab, has found it politically expedient to attack the state government for providing low-priced agricultural land to Reliance for a rural farming center.

India's Agriculture Secretary, Radha Singh, is backing the big companies' entry into vegetables and fruits because of the obvious growth potential and the impact they can have on farmers' performance. She is also encouraging states to relax the mandis' monopoly and improve infrastructure.

"Until recently," Singh says, "the government has never looked at linkages beyond basic food production because the focus has been on self-sufficiency."

One big company that has already had a positive impact on Indian agriculture is PepsiCo (Charts). The American company has been working with farmers in Punjab since the 1980s, initially pulping tomatoes in return for obtaining government permission to produce and sell its drinks in India. Pepsi introduced new varieties that have helped boost the state's tomato crop from 18,000 tons in 1988 to 300,000 tons this year.

Although no longer involved with tomatoes, Pepsi has a five-year program with the Punjab government to provide several hundred farmers with four million sweet-orange trees for its Tropicana juices by 2008. It is also developing a seaweed crop for a food-gelling agent on 4,000 rafts off the southern Indian coast. And it has introduced Punjab farmers to high-yielding varieties of other crops, such as basmati rice, mangoes, potatoes, chilies, peanuts, and barley, which it uses for its Frito-Lay snacks or sells to domestic and foreign buyers. Last year its agriculture exports totaled $40 million.

"This started off as a government obligation," says Abhiram Seth, Pepsi's exports director, "then became corporate social responsibility, and is now a business."

work cited

CNN.com

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