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Amul says 'cheese' -- and enters pizza market

Pradeep Mallik, in Ahmedabad

After giving multinationals a run for their money in butter and ice cream, Amul, India's best-known dairy co-operative, is now making international fast food majors like Dominos and Pizza Hut jittery.

If the response they have generated in Ahmedabad and now New Delhi is any indication then Amul's pizzas are set to take Indian cities by storm.

Going by the serpentine queue that forms outside the Amul outlet that opened in Ahmedabad last week,there is hardly any room for doubt that its pizzas are already a rage.

The Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, the Rs 20-billion co-operative and proud owners of the Amul brand of milk and milk products, opened its first pizza outlet at Surat, in south Gujarat, about a month ago.

Opening pizza outlets was part of a pilot project and a dairy in Surat was a test case.

"We enjoy 75 per cent of the cheese market. The idea was to further popularise our cheese," GCMMF managing director B M Vyas told IANS from Anand, about 75 km from Ahmedabad.

Priced a mere Rs 20 a piece, Amul pizza was a runaway success, prompting the GCMMF to go for a bigger plan that includes opening 3,000 outlets in 300 cities across the country.

Outlets have opened in New Delhi even as trade inquiries are pouring in at Anand. The GCMMF plans to open outlets in cities where it already has strong presence. Ahmedabad alone may have about 100 outlets this year.

"Of course we want to sell more cheese," said brand manager Pawan Kumar. The GCMMF sells about 3,500 tons of Amul cheese annually. Kumar expects its sales to go up by about 1000 tons.

The runaway success of the outlet at Royal Sweet Mart, off the upmarket C G Road in Ahmedabad, has only reinforced GCMMF's resolve to take its pizzas across India.

Vyas says that federation will position its pizza as a mass consumption product and will leverage its countrywide distribution network to promote it.

Mushroom, margarita, tomato-onion and fruit are some of the toppings that Amul offers to begin with.

That the GCMMF is pretty serious about its latest venture is obvious because it has included the "Jain pizza" among its offerings.

The Jain pizza will not have any root produce like onion, ginger or garlic in the dressing. This keeps in mind the fact that the Jain community does not consume roots.

With projected sales of 100 pizzas a day at each outlet in the very first year, Amul will indeed have a tall order at hand.

Indo-Asian News Service

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