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July 28, 2023
Manu Balachandran, Forbes India
July 28, 2023
Revant Himatsingka doesn’t despise junk food.
The 31-year-old firmly believes that those who consume it also know the perils and long-term risks associated with it. From obesity to heart disease and diabetes, junk food is often counted as a more serious threat to life than even smoking according to some studies. “Most people who consume Coke and cigarettes know they are bad for you and consume them,” Himatsingka says.
Himatsingka, however, has a problem with junk food masquerading as healthy. That’s why over the past few months he has been busy calling out its makers, and in the process taking on some of the world’s biggest FMCG behemoths.
Since April this year, Himatsingka, through his social media profile, Foodpharmer, claims to have taken on almost all the FMCG companies in India, whose products he has reviewed, and in the process has been swamped with lawsuits. Himatsingka has a following of half a million followers on Instagram.
“Food is probably 60-70 percent of what shapes our health,” Himatsingka told Forbes India over a telephone call. “And what is shaping our food today is packaged food, which is very different from what our grandparents grew up eating. Most packaged food is just selling junk and they’re marketing it as healthy. This happens even more in relatively poorer countries.”
Himatsingka began his war against fake claims with a video about Bournvita, made by confectionary maker Mondelez. That video, critiquing the children’s drink for its excessive use of sugar, was shared across social media and on WhatsApp. Himatsingka poked fun at Bournvita’s tagline Tayyari Jeet Ki (preparing for victory), instead suggesting that Bournvita was preparing children for diabetes.
He listed out all the ingredients in Bournvita, debunked claims that the drink is healthy, and remarked that half of a package of Bournvita is sugar, and [it] even contains cancer-causing ingredients.
Trouble soon followed. Mondelez sent Himatsingka a legal notice asking him to take down the video within 24 hours. Coincidentally, the notice came to him on the last day of his notice period at McKinsey where he had been working as a consultant. Unfortunately for Mondelez, the video continues to be in circulation, more so across WhatsApp. Himatsingka took down the video and even issued a statement saying that he had no interest or resources to take on the company in any court cases.
“Most people have Coke once a week,” Himatsingka says. “But people have Bournvita twice a day. So you end up having 14 [servings of] Bournvita in a week. So, the net impact of Bournvita is probably worse than that of Coke.”
“As a growing market, India is potentially a natural “dumping ground” for poor products and processes that have been used by prominent brands in other markets,” Devangshu Dutta, the founder and CEO of management consultancy firm Third Eyesight says. “It is incumbent upon Indian customers to be diligent, picking up cues not only from Indian consumer-activists and but also their counterparts in the developed economies.”
From Kolkata to New York and back
Himatsingka grew up in an upper-middle-class household, with a homemaker mother and a father running his own business in Kolkata.
After his schooling, Himatsingka went to New York to study finance at the New York University’s NYU Stern School of Business where he graduated in finance. For a year after that he worked with a bank in the US. At 22, he ventured out into writing a book, Selfienomics, a self-help comedy book focusing on managing finances, health, religion, death, starting a business, and even completing projects on time.
“I wrote one chapter on how to read a food label even then,” Himatsingka says. “Back then, and even now I believe that it is the most important skill in the 21st century.” While he did secure admission into the illustrious IIM Bangalore, Himatsingka turned it down, instead focussing on his book.
By 2018, Himatsingka went to do an MBA at Wharton and followed it up with a course in nutrition, while also starting work at McKinsey as a consultant. “As a consultant, you work to solve business problems and you try to structure solutions,” Himatsingka says. “We focus on our career when it comes to structuring solutions and being data driven. But I try to extrapolate that into life. In life, one of our most important aspects is health.”
Himatsingka was also concerned by the growing link between cancer and heart diseases to packaged and processed food. In 2019, a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) suggested a possible link between “ultra-processed” foods and cancer. The study defined ultra-processed foods as those lacking vitamins and fibre, which also contain high levels of sugar, fat, and salt. Such ultra-processed food, the study noted, represents as much as half of the daily energy intake in several developed countries.
“This is such a big problem and no one is talking about it,” Himatsingka says. “No one is trying to solve it. So, I thought, I wanted to do something in this space.”
That meant, Himatsingka, who by his own account was making very good money in the US, decided it was time to come back home, and try and do something around awareness. “I’m very social impact driven,” Himatsingka says. “April 1st is when I made the Bournvita video. I made a video showcasing how Bournvita was falsely labelling itself. Their label showed that you get stronger bones and muscles. Then I got a legal notice from Bournvita asking me to take down the video in 24 hours.”
The idea for the Bournvita video, Himatsingka says, came from his concern that a product like Coke had become the face of obesity and junk food, while many others were marketing themselves as healthy, without it being so.
Mondelez, the makers of Bournvita soon retorted that the drink contains nutrients such as Vitamin A, C, D, iron, zinc and copper that help build immunity and have been part of its formulation for 70 years. It also said that every serve of Bournvita has 7.5 grams of added sugar, much less than the recommended limit for children.
imatsingka though found support from unexpected quarters. The Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest India (NAPi) a think tank comprising independent experts in epidemiology, human nutrition, community nutrition and paediatrics, medical education, administration, and management, issued a statement supporting Himatsingka.
“The food product Bournvita falls under the ultra-processed food (UPF) category based on its ingredients list,” NAPi said in a statement. “This industrial formulation is inherently harmful. There is enough scientific evidence present in the public domain pertaining to the negative impact of increasing consumption of UPFs on human health, which include several chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and depression (Non-Communicable Diseases-NCDs).”
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) also issued a notice to Mondelez asking the company to review and withdraw all misleading advertisements, packaging, and labels. The NCPCR is a statutory body to protect child rights.
Fighting it out now
Personally, for Himatsingka, the pushback from Mondelez couldn’t have come at a worse time. “I had just quit my job. And my family was asking me what I was trying to do with my life. They said ‘you had such a good job, you left all of that, now you are getting into a legal fight’,” Himatsingka says. “So I removed the video as they asked me to. And that got even more attention.”
Since then, Himatsingka has been actively taking on FMCG companies and their products in the country, ranging from ketchup, and chyawanprash to juices and bread among others. Himatsingka recounts having received legal notices from Dabur and even been asked to remove a video by Sting Energy, owned by PepsiCo.
He says his strength, however, comes from many parents who have reached out to him and are thanking his efforts for making them aware of the importance of reading labels. “People are reading labels for the first time and have now started figuring that many of the products are not that healthy,” Himatsingka says.
However, the pressure of the job continues to be heavy. “There is a lot of pressure,” the 31-year-old says. “These companies send legal notices and I have no idea how to deal with it. These are very technical and very dense documents, where they analyse each line and write a paragraph on each line. I once got a 300-page document from one company and they were asking me for a few crores. It’s strenuous.”
What lies ahead?
For now, the 31-year-old says his focus remains steadfast on raising awareness around food.
“Because of the Bournvita controversy, the rollover impact is that all the other companies are also going to get scared now to falsely market themselves,” Himatsingka says. “I cannot think of a human problem that is relatively easy to solve than nutrition labels and it creates massive impact.”
A few weeks ago, Himatsingka raised awareness about the growing consumption of bread in India and how most makers of bread who sell whole wheat or brown bread use more maida, which has less fiber, and is unhealthy. He had also called out juice makers for their use of sugar by comparing various mango juices available in the country.
“When a movie comes out, there are reviews and I can openly say whether I liked a movie or not,” Himatsingka says. “So why can’t I say the same about a food product? I’m just unboxing a product and saying what is there inside it. So I don’t think I’m legally wrong. They can ask me for whatever money they want. But I don’t think they can win on that.”
Along the way, he says he has also seen positive changes in companies. For instance, Himatsingka made a video on ketchup and explained how Maggi Rich Tomato Ketchup has more sugar than tomato in its ingredients. “Last month, they (Nestle) announced that they’re changing the recipe,” Himatsingka says. “They’re reducing their sugar content and they are going to have more tomatoes than sugar. One tiny change like that has such a major impact on the large scale.”
Experts agree that the growing scrutiny about ingredients is certain to give FMCG majors sleepless nights. “Given that food has a disproportionate share in our spend, an enormous impact on our health as well as a tremendous ecological footprint, it is only natural for consumers to question the composition, the origins, and the overall impact of the food that is being sold by leading brands,” says Dutta of Third Eyesight. “Over the last several decades, packaged food has become laden with synthetic flavouring, colouring, and shelf-life-extending chemicals, which are being called into question by activists through blogs and social media. On several occasions, prominent companies are forced to change their product composition or, at the very least, admit to the health-negative implications of their ingredients.”
Meanwhile, over the past three or four weeks, Himatsingka says he hasn’t been flooded with lawsuits. That’s partly because he has become quite careful about how he words his statements, instead focusing only on the merits of his argument.
“There are millions of problems in the world. But most of the problems are very hard to solve, like air pollution. But teaching people how to read a food label is easy. I feel learning how to read a food label is more important than coding in the 21st century, where most of what we’re eating is processed or packaged.”
Indeed, the fight is long. And Himatsingka is only gearing up for more.
(Published in Forbes India)
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June 30, 2023
Pooja Yadav, Afaqs
June 30, 2023
Over the last two-three years, we have seen technology innovations making its way into the Indian jewellery sector. Brands have been trying to transform the online jewellery segment by using various technologies like augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), live video assistance, computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and more.
Despite the numerous innovations, the offline jewellery segment is still ahead of the online space, when it comes to sales. What makes the offline jewellery segment outpace the online segment?
The Indian e-commerce market is expected to grow to $111.40 billion by 2025 from $46.2 billion in 2020, as per an International Institute of Gemology report. While the segment remains to grow, what drives it back is the customer preference for physical jewellery stores.
Vipin Nair, marketing head & CRM at Malabar Gold & Diamonds, points out, “As of now, there seems to be no real alternative to trying on jewellery pieces in a retail store. Brands have been able to crack the logistics part, but not the ‘feel’ part. AR/VR has been around for a long time, but it doesn’t give you a feel of the jewellery pieces. It is a poor technology. The big purchases will continue to happen only in offline stores.”
Nair adds that despite the many challenges in the online space, it is now growing faster than before. “Earlier, there was a disconnect in the online segment. A customer had to wait for two-three weeks to receive a product. The online platforms seem to have cracked this business model, as whatever you like today, you can order and get it in a day’s time.”
Online jewellery segment started gaining popularity in 2020. In 2018, Tanishq started its e-comm website, and many other brands accompanied it in the online journey. What started with Tanishq has become a new journey for many start-ups and brands in the online space.
During Covid, the jewellery industry has been one of the worst-hit. Advent of online shopping and consumers relying on digital platforms during pandemic, helped brands strategise and invest more on online platforms.
According to Devangshu Dutta, founder and chief executive of Third Eyesight, trust is important when one is buying jewellery.
“It’s not a question of innovations. You can have virtual trials, whether it is online or in a store. But at the end, the customers have to see the piece and then buy it. Even if you are an online brand, you have to be able to offer an omnichannel experience. You have to enable in-home experience.”
As per Dutta, what’s required in this segment, is a change of mindset. “The share of online and modern retail will grow with time.”
Brands like Tanishq, Bluestone, Malabar, Kalyan Jewellers, Tata CLiQ, etc., are working on newer technologies. Then there are new players like the Aditya Birla Group that is set to foray into the branded jewellery retail business, with an investment of Rs 5,000 crore. The group’s new venture ‘Novel Jewels’ will have in-house brands in large-format exclusive retail stores across India.
Rashi Goel, founder and CEO, Performonks, says that the new brands entering the category, are trying to change the rules of the game. “These brands cater to working women, who want lighter, modern and fashionable pieces that they can match and wear with their outfits every day. So, the battle will be of brand building.”
“Tanishq offers light pieces, but tends to advertise heavy wedding jewellery, because that is in line with the category codes. The Aditya Birla Group will have to differentiate itself through the product experience. It will have to tell a brand story that takes the category narrative forward. If it is targeting young women looking for modern styles, it may benefit by having a direct-to-consumer (D2C) element (alongside retail stores in big cities). It could incorporate technology, where women can ‘try on’ jewellery virtually on the app.”
Recent trends
Citing the World Gold Council, Asian Lite International reports that there is a growing demand for lightweight and studded jewellery. Bridal jewellery alone accounts for at least half of the market share.
“Women prefer lightweight jewellery because it is practical and blends well with a modern lifestyle,” shares Nair of Malabar Gold & Diamonds.
Technology innovations may bring in some challenges, but they are also helping many people, in terms of convenience and choice. The online segment, which is still a fraction of the offline segment, is lately generating interest among digital savvy millennials.
Puneet Mansukhani, partner, KPMG in India, states that the online jewellery space has been garnering significant attention, especially amongst the millennials.
“Customer expectations are changing. Personalisation is playing a critical role. Technology involvement is increasing by the day, with AR taking the lead. However, the industry still has to tackle challenges around pilferage.”
On the upcoming trends, Mansukhani says, “Jewellery which is made to order with a modern look of hyper-personalisation (customised), is gaining importance, considering that value and convenience continue to be the top drivers of consumption.”
Manufacturers are increasingly focussing on producing lightweight pieces to satisfy the demands of young consumers, especially those who want to wear gold jewellery that matches with their western outfit every day, as per a World Gold Council report.
According to Third Eyesight’s Dutta, since fashion (lightweight) jewellery usually doesn’t cost much, “a consumer is not that invested in it. You can buy it online, like any other fashion product.”
The World Gold Council report adds that studded jewellery – known as ‘Polki’, ‘Kundan’ or ‘Jadau’ – has an estimated market share of 15-20%. The share of studded jewellery in North India is considerably higher. In South India, consumers are more inclined towards gold products, 60-70% of which are studded with diamonds and the remaining 30-40% are set with precious or semi-precious stones.
Jewellery landscape
In India, jewellery was traditionally purchased for investment purposes. People used to believe in buying heavy jewellery. But now, there’s a shift towards versatility and contemporary jewellery.
Nair states, “Contemporary designs are getting a lot of traction lately. It was not the case 10-15 years back. Lightweight jewellery is now in vogue and heavy jewellery is restricted to occasions like weddings. People now are looking for something practical. They are more into the design, quality, etc.”
Will the changing consumer preferences impact the bridal jewellery market?
Bridal jewellery dominates the gold jewellery landscape, with 50-55% of market share. Indians usually purchase gold for two occasions – weddings and festivals.
Around 11-13 million weddings take place in India every year. With women marrying at an average age of 22 and more than half of the country’s population below the age of 25, the demand for bridal jewellery will remain strong over the long-term, as per the World Gold Council data.
Going forward
The jewellery manufacturing landscape in India is largely unorganised and skill-intensive. Most jewellery pieces are still hand-crafted by artisans.
“Hence, the scale continues to be limited. Although we are gradually seeing jewellery retailers invest in large set-ups. We are also witnessing the overall jewellery market heading towards formalisation on the back of GST, government policies around hallmarking and exports,” shares Mansukhani of KPMG.
“For large players looking to enter this space, automation and focussing on in-house manufacturing, could help jewellers counter the high manufacturing charges.”
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June 5, 2023
Viveat Susan Pinto, Financial Express
June 5, 2023
A lot has happened at the Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) since its founder VG Siddhartha tragically passed away on July 29, 2019. Once India’s largest cafe chain, with a peak store count of 1,752 outlets in FY19, the company, part of Coffee Day Enterprises (CDEL), has now slashed its footprint by over two-thirds to 469 outlets in FY23, its latest results show.
The need to manage group debt and ensure that the business is profitable, say experts, has led to CCD shuttering stores over the last few years. The company was not immediately available for comment.
This has come even as the Rs 5,000-crore domestic coffee retail market is booming, with chains such as Starbucks and Tim Hortons announcing plans to ramp up store count over the next few years.
Consider this: Tata Starbucks, part of Tata Consumer Products, said in its Q4 investor presentation recently that it would introduce learnings from a pilot it ran in 2022, where the focus would be on introducing familiar and more beverage options, a new ‘Picco’ size (which is a smaller size) in beverages, a revamped food menu and more inviting store interiors. All of this was expected to aid sales growth and also help it get into newer markets, the company said of its future growth plans.
Tarun Jain, chief executive officer of Time Hortons India, meanwhile, said that the company was targeting 120 stores in the next three years and on its radar were metros as well as mini metros and satellite cities.
“The out-of-home market is booming after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted last year. And we are seeing this uptick in our stores,” Jain said of the response to Tim Hortons’ cafes in India, which were first launched in August last year. There are over 15 Tim Hortons cafes in the country across Delhi-NCR, parts of Punjab such as Chandigarh and Ludhiana and Mumbai. Starbucks has 333 cafes in 41 cities so far. “While the coffee retail market is growing, in CCD’s case the need to downsize has to do with internal issues. Sometimes a smaller footprint just helps to manage operations better especially when you are dealing with larger problems such as a debt overhang,” says Devangshu Dutta, chief executive officer of retail consultancy Third Eyesight.
Revenue from CDEL’s coffee retail business, which includes the CCD chain, wasRs 1,653 crore in FY19, which was down to Rs 869 crore in FY23. When compared to FY22, however, the revenue from this business has jumped by 75% in FY23, contributing as much as 94% to group turnover for the year. In FY22, the contribution of the coffee retail business to group turnover was 85%, its results showed. Losses in FY23 have narrowed to Rs 68 crore from Rs 112 crore in FY22. In FY19, the company had a net profit of Rs 10 crore.
Apart from cafes, CCD also has kiosks and vending machines installed in corporate offices, institutions and business hubs. While the number of kiosks has fallen over the last few years and is estimated at 250 now from a peak of 537 in FY19, the number of vending machines are growing after briefly slowing down over the last few years. From a peak of 58,697 crore in FY20, it is now close to 50,000 in number, the company’s latest results show. Group debt too, which stood at Rs 7,214 crore in FY19, is down by over two-thirds to Rs 1,711 crore as on March 31, 2023.
CDEL has over the last few years cut debt by selling assets, experts tracking the market said. Asset sales have included offloading a tech park in Bengaluru to private equity firm Blackstone for Rs 2,700 crore as well as selling off CDEL’s stake in tech firm Mindtree (which has now merged with L&T Infotech) for Rs 1,800 crore. CDEL still has around Rs 1,028 crore of dues to be recovered from Mysore Amalgamated Coffee Estates, a promoter entity, which owed around Rs 2,700 crore to the company five years ago.
(Published in Financial Express)
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May 26, 2023
Chloe Cornish in Mumbai and Eleanor Olcott in Hong Kong, Financial Times
May 26 2023
India’s biggest company Reliance Industries is seeking to dominate the country’s $10bn online domestic fashion market, striking a deal with Shein that will allow the rapidly growing Chinese retailer to return to the world’s most populous nation.
The retail unit of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s petrol-to-telecoms conglomerate will tie up with Shein three years after India banned the online retailer’s app in its attempt to freeze Chinese companies out of the local market in retaliation for border clashes that had left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead.
“We can confirm Shein’s partnership with Reliance Retail and have no additional comment at this time,” said Shein, declining to answer questions about the structure of the deal. Reliance did not respond to queries about the partnership, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The addition of a low-priced offering gives India’s biggest listed company by market capitalisation an important boost in its battle to dominate the country’s growing online fashion retail market, which was worth $10bn in 2022, according to analyst estimates.
As part of the licence agreement, which was recently approved by the government, Shein will receive a percentage of profits generated from its fast fashion sales in India, people familiar with the deal said, while Reliance will help Shein build a supply chain with India’s garment industry for global exports.
The move into Indian sourcing comes as Shein diversifies its supply chain outside the coastal province of Guangdong in southern China, where it has 8,000 suppliers, mostly located in the garment hub of Panyu. Pandemic-era supply chain bottlenecks, rising labour costs in China and geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington have propelled multinational companies, including Apple and clothing retailer Mango, to migrate parts of their supply chains out of the country.
Shein, which does not sell in China, has been seeking to distance itself from its home country. Last year, it made its Singapore arm the de facto holding company, rapidly expanding its workforce there and shifting some of its operations from its China headquarters in Nanjing.
Shein will seek to minimise delivery times by having more manufacturing centres around the world. India, meanwhile, hopes to benefit from multinationals’ “China plus one” movement, a strategy that seeks to avoid investing only in China and aims to diversify supply chains to other countries.
Reliance has signed agreements with international luxury brands ranging from Balenciaga to Burberry, catering to India’s small but growing demographic of super-rich consumers. In addition, it has nearly 13,000 bricks-and-mortar stores across the country selling affordable apparel.
“Reliance’s other international brand partnerships are more premium, being luxury or designer brands,” said Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of consultant Third Eyesight. “India is still a relatively low per capita income economy. The bigger opportunity is in brands which are euphemistically called value brands, and that’s where Shein is positioned.”
For Shein, access to the Indian market will allow the company to boost sales as the pace of its expansion in Europe and the US begins to lose steam, according to people briefed on its growth figures.
The Financial Times reported that in a recent presentation to investors, Shein forecast that gross merchandise value — the total value of merchandise sold on its platform — will almost triple by 2025 to $80.6bn compared with the figure last year.
The lofty revenue projections come ahead of a much anticipated initial public offering, which promises to be one of the largest listings of a Chinese-founded company in years.
In fashion ecommerce, Reliance lags behind Myntra, one of India’s oldest ecommerce players, which merged with Walmart-backed Flipkart in 2014. Myntra accounts for around half of the online fashion market in India, according to Satish Meena, an independent ecommerce analyst based in Gurgaon.
“Myntra is the nucleus” for online fashion, said Ankur Bisen, senior partner at retail consultancy Technopak Advisors, adding that its “cohort” of shoppers is primarily young and urban. “With the Reliance and Shein partnership, they would like to get into this cohort and break the monopoly of Myntra,” Bisen said.
Meena estimates that Reliance’s ecommerce fashion business Ajio has about 4 per cent of market share, while Bisen put Ajio among the “long tail” of ecommerce fashion ventures behind Myntra. Reliance’s JioMart online shop also sells clothes, alongside groceries and electronics.
“If you look at Reliance as a company, it’s about dominance and it’s about long term,” Dutta said.
(Published in the Financial Times)
admin
May 24, 2023
Shambhavi Anand, Economic Times
New Delhi, May 24, 2023
Retailers and shopkeepers will soon not be allowed to seek phone numbers of their customers while generating bills, according to a diktat by the department of consumer affairs, a senior government official said.
Taking the numbers of customers without their “express consent” is a breach and encroachment of privacy, said the official, without wanting to be identified.
The official added that such a move will be classified as an unfair trading practice defined as any business practice or act that is deceptive, fraudulent, or causes injury to a consumer.
Most large retailers mandatorily take down buyers’ phone numbers while generating the bill for their purchases and use them for loyalty programmes or sending push messages.
The move has come after the department received several complaints from consumers about retailers insisting on getting their phone numbers. This will be communicated to all retailers through industry bodies representing retailers soon, the official added.
While the implementation of these new rules may require some adjustments and initial costs for retailers, it is seen as a necessary step towards protecting consumer privacy and ensuring fair business practices in the retail sector, said experts.
While retailers will have to rework their systems in case this becomes a regulation, this won’t stop them from asking for phone numbers of consumers as their loyalty programmes run on these numbers, said Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, a retail consultancy firm.
He added that retailers also use numbers for sending e-invoices and so this could have a cost impact and environmental impact.
(Published in Economic Times)
