On a holiday, the daughter of Ajay Gupta, Managing Director, Capital Foods, insisted on eating street food. One of the things the family ordered during that outing was Schezwan Dosa. Gupta, whose company is behind brands such as Ching’s Secret and Smith & Jones, was curious to know about how the street food vendor put together the Schezwan sauce. The outing led to the creation of Schezwan chutney which is now among the company’s best-selling products – reportedly a ₹100-crore business.

That anecdote makes Rama Bijapurkar, a leading voice on the consumer economy and market strategy, wonder aloud: “How did the small guy on the street get it right before the big companies?” Bijapurkar is moderating a star-studded panel organised by retailing giant Future Group. The panel includes Varun Berry, MD of Britannia Industries, S Raghunandan, CEO, Jyothy Labs, Devendra Chawla, group president, food and FMCG, Future group, Neeraj Kakkar, CEO, Hector Beverages that makes Paper Boat drinks, and Santosh Desai, MD & CEO, Future Brands, apart from Gupta.

Other panelists jump to the defence of Gupta saying that the guy on the street has a natural advantage over companies. “Companies have a structure that is naturally opposed to innovation of this kind,” says one.

Another chips in saying that while pasta and macaroni might be branded by big companies, in the interiors of Uttar Pradesh like Kanpur Dehat, vendors have been selling macaroni in gunny bags for a very long time. Did you know that chicken tikka happened in the UK first, asks another.

If one were to create a food company for the next generation of Indians, what would it be like? Chawla of Future Group feels that going by the stage of evolution of consumers, India’s time is now. “So what will the consumer of Next Gen consume?” asks Bijapurkar. Will they be content with a Coca-Cola or be comfortable with a jaljeera marketed by the likes of Paper Boat? “In terms of food our tastes are ever evolving,” says Desai. In the past, our food habits were dictated by where we came from. For example, a Gujarati would always prefer his dal to be sweet, irrespective of whether he liked it or not. But now they are changing. “Consumers are stepping out of their pigeon-hole identity. They are looking at new ways of expressing themselves and food is an integral part of that expression,” says Desai.

As a result, the same consumer prefers his plate to contain the best of all worlds – a little bit of where they come from, a little bit of what they see around, a little bit in the purest form, a little bit of Indianised food (like the Schezwan chutney).

Today, desi is seen as cool. While Paper Boat is seen as a cool brand, so are other home-grown brands in the non-food space, like accessory maker Chumbak that makes it to the top brands in a young consumer’s mind. Will Indian companies have a distinct advantage or will MNCs emerge as winners? Berry says that while MNCs bring their experience from many countries and have a close understanding of what works across the world, Indian companies have a faster decision-making process, coupled with a better understanding of the Indian consumer. So can Coca-Cola do a jaljeera variant for the Indian market? Kakkar says that they can of course do it, but global brands would rather not dilute the core promise of their brands. Raghunandan adds that most MNCs operate on the principle of the “size of the prize” where they prioritise projects that would have an appeal across countries. “They would launch a jaljeera only if they are confident that the drink will find takers even in other emerging markets, like Africa,” he says.

If food brands have a such a close cultural connect with India, why do Indian companies such as Capital launch foreign sounding brands such as Ching’s Secret and Smith & Jones, asks Bijapurkar. “We are Chingapuram. That’s where we come from,” quips Gupta. The future of the food business in India is clearly the blend of both worlds.

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