Anand: Amidst the ongoing debate over Gujarat Milk giant AMUL entering the market in Karnataka. Jayen Mehta, managing director of AMUL clarified that AMUL has entered the Bengaluru market to cater for a specific group of customers and has no intention to compete with the local brand NANDINI.

Jayen Mehta, Managing Director of AMUL, said, “It can never be Amul vs Nandini, it is Amul & Nandini. Both of us are cooperative organizations. Both of us are owned by farmers. Both of us are working together for several decades to make India the largest producer of milk in the world. “

“Our entry in Karnataka is not recent. We have been selling fresh milk in pouches in north Karnataka Hubli, Belgaum and that region since 2015. So this news that Amul entering Karnataka to disturb Nandini is baseless and unfounded. We have been working very closely with Nandini and Karnataka Milk Federation, both for manufacturing Amul products. There are three plants in Karnataka under KMF, which are manufacturing Amul ice cream even today, and this we have been doing since 1998. So, last year we got manufactured about ₹ 100 crores worth of Amul Icecream from three plants in Karnataka using the milk of Karnataka and Nandini marketed by us across Karnataka and south India,” Jayen added.

“During the Covid period, we purchased roughly ₹ 200 crores worth of cheese from the plants in Karnataka, made with Nandini milk when there was no market for milk and surplus milk. We supported our brothers and sisters of Karnataka and used that. We have been working very very closely with them on several things so we can never ever think of disturbing Nandini and the farmers of Karnataka,” Amul MD further said.

Talking about the price difference with Nandini, Mehta said, “We launched milk in Karnataka at the price of ₹54 per litre of toned milk, the same price which you are paying in Delhi or Mumbai, in Bengaluru we have we have maintained the same price as compared to Nandini which has been selling milk for ₹30-40 a litre. So per se, Nandini follows its own pricing model and we follow our own pricing model then the customer will make their own choice based on the prices of the product and what they have been paying. So that’s why it’s one more reason to assure everyone that Amul is not intending to undercut Nandin by selling it at price cheaper.” 

Talking about the entry into the market via e-commerce Mehta said “Here in this case our effort to supply through the Bengaluru market is not from a plant based in Karnataka but from the plant which is 100 kms away from Bengaluru in Andhra Pradesh. Having said that, given the price difference between both the brands it is not possible for us to even think of competing by using a local manufacturing base and trying to sell it in the conventional way as we sell in Bombay, Delhi, Kolkata and other cities.”

“So that is why we adopted the e-commerce route only to take care of the demands few customers whose demands were visible to us in form of their searches. We have been studying these trends not only in Bengaluru but in every single city of the country. And we know what consumers look for in Amul products through the different e-commerce platforms. So that data helped us get an insight that there may be a small segment that is interested in buying Amul products. This is why we avoided the detailed distribution route and focused only on the quick commerce route to launch milk in Bengaluru city. This means we are operating in a very niche segment and not in a mainstream segment,” he added. 

Mehta further said, “If Nandini does well in Karnataka, it’s good for us, and we don’t need to essentially get into that market for the sake of it. And particularly when there is a big price disadvantage also. It should be looked at in the spirit of cooperation rather than competition, and that’s what our efforts have been.”

“We cannot comment on any criticism because those who are criticizing are also perhaps our customers. The point is that Amul and Nandini will continue to work together to build a stronger future for our farmers, he added. DeshGujarat