Publications

This article Where are the Global Food Brands from India by Anuradha Goyal, author, and founder of IndiTales.com was first published by the New Indian Express newspaper on November 18, 2020.

Food dominates our hearts and minds on a daily basis. And with enhanced emotions on festivals and celebrations. Pandemic brought us closer to food by providing us time to engage in elaborate cooking at home. Not to mention that when we stepped out of our homes post lockdown, a lot of new grocery stores had popped up in the neighborhood. For that is all people were spending on.

Global Food Brands From India?

Put on your business hat and let’s look at the food brands from India. I looked at many ‘Top brands in India lists’, both with all brands and with only Indian brands. Amul is the only food brand that features prominently in all the lists. At times accompanied by fellow dairy companies like Mother Dairy and Nandini. Britannia features in some. In beverages, Paperboat has established itself as a niche Indian drink brand and sometimes makes the cut. I expected Haldirams, MTR, and Bikaji in these lists. It seems they have more visibility than business or vice-versa. I remember when Haldirams, a leading ready to eat snack brand, first opened their airport outlet at Delhi airport. Almost everyone at the airport was seen with their hamper. It is a dependable brand to consume and gift.

On Instagram, I discovered a bouquet of niche food brands with inviting images. And generous use of words like organic, natural, sustainable, eco for the products ranging from cheese to honey to cold-pressed oils to coffee and even tonic water. Their market is obviously national and global. Fuelled by the independent logistics companies that make shipping anywhere easy enough. I count them as the emerging broad base of the food industry pyramid. They will remain small and medium enterprises. Catering to their niche customers from their limited local supplies.

We have traditional Mithai brands synonymous with the cities they come from. Be it Agra’s Petha or Pune’s Bakarwadi or Odisha’s Rasagulla or Hyderabad’s Karachi Biscuits. All of them are slowly stepping out beyond their city limits and can be found at airports and at online shops. They remain a favorite with the global diaspora driven by nostalgia.

Strong homegrown food-based consumer brands

The question is, with a billion-plus people, why do we not have strong homegrown food-based consumer brands? Hardly see any new brands that have come up in the last 2-3 decades that can stand next to Amul in terms of brand value? There are two ways to look at it.

First, it clearly points out the gap in branding and on-ground presence of large food-based brands. We see smaller brands emerging fast in segments like yogurt, in a country that has curd and so many curd-based cuisines. But we hardly see any Desi brands innovating in a way that they look ahead while being rooted in the Indian pallet.

Second, it means that the food market is distributed with no big national or international players. This implies that at least when it comes to food, we are consuming local to a large extent. The pandemic has given this another boost in the arm as we see a lot more local packaged food being sold. As long as the quality of the products can be ensured, this is the best thing to happen.

India the Largest Producer

India is the largest producer of milk, mangoes, bananas, guavas, papayas. And the second-largest producer of fruits, vegetables & marine products. We do see large brands in dairy products. The same is clearly missing in all other categories. Look at the juice brands or any other products that are produced using fresh produce. More often than not they are coming from an international brand. There are spice brands, new and old. But most of them are merely packaged products. We have not seen the innovative use of spices in developing new products. Imagine a spice-based ice-cream or summer drinks or Ayurveda based products.

Many years back I had written about simple jaggery based confectionary with different flavors. I was happy to receive a version of it from an entrepreneur in Karnataka. I saw world-class coffee chocolates in Araku. But am yet to see them outside of eastern ghats. Sun-dried bananas found in villages of South India can be a pan-India product under a single brand.

FDI

Ministry of food processing industries allows 100% FDI in the food sector with many schemes that promise easy credit availability. Of the 283 food parks planned across the country, some are already operational. There is a potential to add a lot more food processing units to the existing 37,000+ registered ones. Two food technology institutes in Haryana and Tamil Nadu promise a supply of trained professionals and an opportunity for research. ‘Make in India’ website lists ideas and opportunities for entrepreneurs as well as investors that should be a good place for potential start-ups in this space.

With a bit of creativity and innovation from the entrepreneurs and smooth execution of the government scheme, we should churn out world-class food brands from India. Look at Malaysia’s Petronas’ Diwali Ad featuring the crunchy irresistible Muruku. You know that the world is waiting for our food products.

Original op-ed article published in the New Indian Express on Nov 18, 2020

Edited for this online publication.

This article E-commerce And The New-Age Middlemen by Anuradha Goyal, author, and founder of IndiTales.com was first published by the New Indian Express newspaper on October 21, 2020.

One of the key things that the Internet promised in its early days was getting rid of middlemen. E-commerce and social media enabled direct interactions between businesses and their consumers – easily and transparently. Marketplaces allowed any of us to become an entrepreneur by equipping us to sell our products or services.

E-commerce The New-Age Middlemen

When they promised the end of evil middlemen telling us to let no one come in between the supplier and the customer, little did we realize that large e-commerce platforms or marketplaces are nothing but new age middlemen? Their revenue comes from a share of transaction value that you conduct through their system. Sure, they invest in creating this large digital real-estate, in algorithms that promote your products to relevant customers and logistics. They are the digital version of a supermarket, who charges you for shelve space plus a margin on the product sold.
Soon the affiliate programs followed. With simple widgets and plugins, anyone with an influence in the digital space becomes a part of the sales force on a revenue-sharing basis. Many thought of it as a source of easy passive income. Only to realize that affiliate marketing demands efforts proportionate to the returns expected.

Once social media became mainstream, it multiplied our everyday network. Anyone we have known at any point in life is now connected no matter where they are. Their network in turn is separated by just one degree, multiplied our network further. Many enterprising individuals spotted early opportunity and started selling on social networks. This included a lot of talented women who ran home-based businesses through their FB pages and groups. Social media platforms observed that commerce happens better between known people and started integrating commerce in their platforms. Parallelly, e-commerce moved to mobile apps reaching out to a large population that joined the digital bandwagon directly on phone.

Organized Sector

E-commerce platforms brought largely the organized sector online both in terms of brands they sold as well as the prime customers they served. Their model was primarily pull-mode and hence all efforts were spent on getting the potential customers on the website or mobile app. Once the customer is there, the sheer variety of products, sales, and offers were there to make them spend.

E-commerce missed out on the reluctant customer who is not very confident in buying without seeing and without knowing who they are buying from. These are not the people who would engage in digital window shopping and must be approached with a push approach through people they trust. Most importantly they prefer to deal in their own language rather than English, the preferred language of digital platforms.

Social Commerce

The answer came in the form of social commerce that marries e-commerce and social media network. It allows anyone to sell, anyone to re-sell and of course, anyone can buy. B2B and B2C models seamlessly combined to become a B2B2C model, with the middle B being the platform. The latest in this series is O2O or Offline to Offline commerce. Meaning both the seller and the buyer are offline. Though the transaction is still enabled by online portals or apps.

Interestingly women are at the forefront of the social commerce revolution. Over 80% of registered re-sellers being women. As resellers, they become the virtual window shoppers for their friends and family. They share product details on social media and order on their behalf, after answering all the queries in their own language. Not to forget that with personalized sales comes the joy of haggling that is so much a part of shopping in India.

Platforms for E-commerce the New-Age Middlemen

In terms of platforms, the Facebook ecosystem clearly dominates with WhatsApp in the lead with a huge margin. Followed by Instagram and Facebook. In-App videos and chats are making inroads. But they still leverage the same platforms for reselling.

The largest categories of products sold are low-value vanity products. Like fashion & mobile accessories, unbranded clothes, etc. Basically, small-ticket products that people buy on impulse. Not really planned expenses. These are mostly supplied by local vendors who produce in small quantities. Including a lot of artists in their initial years. Some portals even include the used products in their portfolio. Think of Janpath in Delhi or Fashion Street in Mumbai or Bangkok’s night market’s going online. It has some elements of multi-level marketing. Remember Amway or Tupperware that was sold by a neighbor always on the lookout for the next customer?

So, one may go to established e-commerce to buy the new mobile phone. But to buy accessories for the phone there is social commerce. This is also a signal of the complimentary peaceful co-existence of both the e-commerce portals and social commerce economy.

So, from what started as a promise of not having any middleman has come a full circle where everyone is a potential middleman, New-Age Middlemen. Practices that have stood the test of time must have had some merit in them. It took us less than a decade to revert to them with a vengeance. It is time to ponder over it when we plan our next innovation cycle.

Original op-ed article published in the New Indian Express on Oct 21, 2020

Edited for this online publication.

This article Publishers – It’s time to read some Innovation books by Anuradha Goyal, author, and founder of IndiTales.com was first published by the New Indian Express newspaper on September 24, 2020.

Publishers Innovate

Publishing industry is one of the least transparent industries. No one knows what the real size of the industry is, even if you exclude e-books directly published on digital platforms and self-published books that are essentially an author’s game. If you keep aside the textbook sales numbers that are predictable enough, you are aiming in the dark.
Lately, some publishers in the Indian publishing industry has become very visible primarily because of a small constellation of bestselling authors and a galaxy of celebrity authors. The latter comes with the promise of big sales.

Literature festivals created the platforms to bring authors close to their readers. They boomed, with every city, every locality having its own Lit Fest, but they were bitten by the glamour bug too soon. Lit fests became the favorite haunt of fashionistas and the real authors missed the horizon. Has this buzz converted into viable revenue for the publishers and their authors remains a question?

Indian Languages

English language publishing dominates the mind space with most big names choosing to write in English – be it a politician, a sportsperson, an actor, or a journalist. Little is spoken about the Indian language publishing, while readership numbers there may be far greater than English language publishing. Gita Press headquartered in Gorakhpur is probably India’s biggest publishing house in India with the widest possible reach and they publish in almost all Indian languages. We know there is a huge readers market in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, and Gujarati.

Quality

The publishing industry once stood for quality. Authors took pride in being published by reputed publishers and readers could trust their judgment. Today, it is a game of click-bait selling. A book is assessed solely on the basis of sales it can generate. Nothing wrong with that, as the industry has to generate revenue for itself and its authors. The problem is readership is not a parameter that they focus on, which may be a small percentage of the numbers sold. For example, most self-help books with catchy titles that promise success or happiness like a one-size-fit-all pill, clock big sales, but people hardly read them, much less use the pill it offers. Marketing muscle is spent on a select few authors.

These cash cows can arm-twist the publishers on their publishing decisions as we saw in a recent controversy.
No one knows the size of the publishing industry. Sales and readership numbers are elusive. Be it the leading publishing houses or small family-run Indian language publishers. Authors give up all rights to their works to the publishers for a small share of revenue generated by their book. The sales numbers are known only to the publisher. The author has no choice but to believe what the publisher shares. There is zero transparency and a nil interest in changing the status quo. The distributor networks are so distributed that collation of numbers leaves ample room for manipulations. This lack of transparency hurts the authors at the micro-level. And it does not help the industry in any way at the macro level.

Bestsellers

Bestselling lists trace their numbers to three primary sources. Neilson Bookscandata covers 60-70% of the spectrum but shares data only with subscribers. The next source is neighborhood bookstore, the accuracy of it is anyone’s guess. The third source is Amazon, which is the best one available in the public domain, as they account for substantial sales and each sale is counted instantly.

Book sales moving online is the biggest industry trend. With their deep discounting policies, online portals have effortlessly killed the neighborhood bookstores. As well as brought down the margins for publishers. Algorithms have taken over personalized recommendations from fellow readers. Even when we know that online ratings that feed the algorithms can be easily manipulated by using your influence or money. Like it or not digital platforms are here to stay. Pandemic just gave them another boost.

Digital Platforms

Digital platforms are more of an opportunity than a challenge if the publishing industry chooses to see them so. E-books account for less than 5% of the overall sales. Which means that most people still prefer to hold a book and read. ‘E-books only’ and audiobooks are emerging as a market segment. Subscription-based reading options are gaining ground as people want to have more choices at hand, or judge the readability for themselves.

The publishing industry needs to innovate and leapfrog by adapting to new technologies and by bringing in transparency. It has to move from being close-fisted with numbers to using data analytics to widen the reach of the industry, to improve the quality of books published. Data can be used effectively to experiment with new genres, new formats, and new mediums. In years of reviewing books, I have seen just one new age publisher experiment with new ideas and succeed at some of them. I wonder if we would ever see a publicly listed publishing house that shares its numbers transparently.

Ironically an industry that publishes authoritative books on so many subjects fails to learn from most of them.

Original oped article published in New Indian Express on Sep 24, 2020

Edited for this online publication.