A Rs 50-cr fund to promote food and beverage brands in global markets

Centre and the industry are going to float the fund with equal contribution

In association with major food and beverage brands the Centre is planning to float a new Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Fund, with an initial corpus of Rs 50 crore. The fund will help the Indian brands to find a space in major retail brands and in other brand building activities in major markets like US, Europe and others. While 50 per cent of the money would come from industries, the balance would come from Centre and its agencies

Piruz Khambatta, chairman, CII National Committee on Food Processing & managing director, Rasna International Ltd, said that one of the major challenges for the industry is brand building and finding a space for Indian products in retail stores in the global markets.

On the sidelines of CII's Food Pro 2015 event at Chennai today, he said to promote Make in India brand there is a need for massive market access fund, income tax deduction for market development as well as superior infrastructure and IT system to hasten exports.

Khambatta is trying to rope in around 25 companies, with a contribution of atleast Rs 1 crore each to this corpus. "This money is specifically to hire space in big super markets like Walmart and others in the western and other global markets," he said.

"Our mistake is we are marketing Indian foods to Indians. We need to market to non-Indians, considering Indians already knew about Indian brands. Branding is key for the industry now," said Khambatta.

He noted that the Food Processing Industry (FPI) can fuel the exports. In the last four years CAGR growth was 26.4 per cent. Exports of processed food and retail commodities in 2013-14 was $37.80 billion as compared to $36.21 billion in 2012-13 and in 2009-10 it was $14.79 billion.

FPI leads to better farm income and higher rural growth, he said. For instance, per capita rural income grew at 7.25 per cent as against 1.2 per cent for urban in the period of 2005 to 2012. FPI also plays a role in addressing inflation by converting agri produce to processed food when prices are low.