Rukmini Gupte: Health makes wealth

Brands are facing a growing demand for healthy products from consumers across the price spectrum

The adage ‘health is wealth’ takes on great urgency when it comes to the food and beverage (F&B) industry in India. Study the development and growth of brands and one can see two powerful forces at work along the consumer pyramid in the country. On the one hand, there is a strong ‘democratisation’ force that is shaping consumer aspirations. ‘Strugglers’ (those who have been at the periphery of the growth story) who are at the base of the pyramid are being exposed to trends much faster and are confident enough to demand the benefits that they would have considered to be out of their reach earlier.

This is something that F&B brands have to recognise. No longer can the promise of health be a privilege that only the elite can aspire to. Packaged food brands have to acknowledge that health is a fundamental right of all people; and those that make this right ‘accessible’ to the many, will not only be fulfilling an important social responsibility but will also be creating future-proof healthier businesses.

Brand accessibility in this instance is not just about price affordability, it is also about physical availability, and even more critically, about being honest and transparent about the true benefits of the brand. 

To this date, the iodisation of common salt remains a ‘best practice’ example of a category led by a brand (Tata Salt) that successfully democratised a critical health benefit and made it accessible to most of the population. And by doing so, a commodity category was transformed to a branded one that yielded better value to all stakeholders. 

The second force that operates along the entire consumer pyramid in growth economies like India is the “ER” factor. This is the consumer expectation that brands will make their today and tomorrow bettER. 

Given that the greatest percentage of emerging economy consumers’ monthly budgets is spent on food, they will demand that food brands give them a competitive edge. F&B brands in India can satisfy this consumer expectation in two fundamental ways:

Fortification: Given the wide-spread micronutrient deficiencies across income segments, brands can fortify and operate at various accessibility points along the entire consumer pyramid.

So whether it brings about deep in-the-pyramid nutrition offers for maternal and child health or fortified offers for young urban adults, there are multiple opportunities for value-addition. 

Leveraging traditional ingredients and belief systems: Packaged F&B brands can make available the ‘goodness’ of traditional ingredients in a safe, hygienic way. Brands that do so successfully will not only satisfy an important consumer need, but they will benefit from a positive commercial impact on the supply chain. 

A critical factor for success will be finding the ‘sweet spot’ in consumer satisfaction. In a true “healthocracy”, brands cannot get away by either :

• Extracting a taste penalty  in providing a healthy choice or

• Confusing consumers with health jargon that at best obfuscates and at worst misleads 

In markets like Scandinavia, being healthy is no longer a choice; it is 

a prerequisite for a brand to  get on the shelf. For an F&B business in India, the opportunity is tremendous: a business or brand that re-engineers its entire value chain with the fundamental goal of a honest ‘health’ promise will not only tick the right boxes in responsibility, but will also be guaranteed a healthier bottom-line for the foreseeable future!

Rukmini Gupte

Brand strategist and consultant,  Healthy Marketing Team