In 1999, when I was a younger retailer at Foodworld, I was subjected to a presentation by a Danish company that used to distribute ice creams in Europe. We were looking at setting up a similar business in India. I took them around the Indian cities and markets.
The year 2012 is almost upon us. And the Danish firm has not returned since! Should I laugh or rue the fact that India has changed only at the margins in food distribution?
Even earlier, in 1988, when I was involved with the Indo-Nissin Foods project (makers of Top Ramen and Cup Noodles, then a Unilever joint venture), I toured with an outstanding FMCG executive from Nissin Japan named Ken Sasahara. (He is today president, Nissin-USA.)
Sasahara and I toured all over India, and he was adventurous in food exploration. We ate at all types of restaurants, from wayside ones to five-star hotels, from Kakeda hotel in Delhi to dhabas in Punjab, Muniandi Villas and military hotels in south India. In typical Japanese style, he catalogued everything on his laptop.
In a month, we were back at our office at Brookefields in Bangalore. As he wrote his report, he asked me, “Hey, I have catalogued here hundreds of delicious dishes. When there is so much food around, who will want to eat noodles? It will always remain a small category.”
And so it is. Since Maggi launched in 1983, instant noodles have grown, but in the context of the overall food category, it remains minuscule.
Coming back to the ice cream story, the insights from that presentation were startling. The Danish company showed the trends in sales over a year in Denmark. I saw that the sales did not decline in winter and peak in summer by a factor of ten, as they do here in India.
I saw that in Denmark where it is cold (read freezing) for most of the year, the sales never declined. The Danes themselves could not answer why. In fact, it never occurred to them to ask why. It struck me then that their homes, offices and cars are all climate-controlled to 16-20 degrees Celsius at all times. So, how does it matter even if the outdoor temperature is minus 20 degrees Celsius?
Generally speaking, neither homes nor the offices in India are warmed up in winter. Even in the west and south of India where in winter temperatures do not go below 10 degrees Celsius, it is still considered “winter”, and there is a decline in sales of cold beverages and ice cream.
I then begin to think of the huge carbon footprint that the Western countries have, compared to India. They consider India polluting? China, the USA and Europe account for 54% of world’s carbon emissions. India, disconcertingly, is at the fifth position with a 5% share.
So, dear readers, let’s not use ice in Coke that is cold already. Let’s take the plastic lid off a glass of beverage. Let’s switch off the air-conditioning at 6am. Walk more, drive less. You get the drift, don’t you?
These are small things that we can do silently to save our planet. Let’s not do it for the newspapers; let us do it for ourselves, for our own silent satisfaction.
The writer is a veteran retail professional and a sector expert. He can be reached at
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