In praise of Amul, now a trillion-rupee business, driven by trust and value

From design thinking to tech adoption, the brand has been ahead of the curve

The news on the front page of Business Standard (April 6, 2026) proclaimed ‘Amul India’s first FMCG firm to hit ₹1 trillion turnover’. This brought back memories of working on the Amul brand. 

 

Amul was and is primarily a liquid milk brand. Even till date, a large part of its trillion-rupee turnover comes from liquid milk. But the brand’s aura is a lot more than just liquid milk. The many products that have been launched in the last forty years have all added to the brand’s larger-than-life image. Not to mention their ‘topicals’ ads; we will come to that in a bit. 

 

This was in 1995-96. Amul was planning to enter the fun category of ice creams. A marketing consumer research veteran who was advising our ad agency on consumer insight development was not sure why Amul was trying to enter ice creams. HUL had acquired Kwality ice cream and, with their global brand Magnum, had big plans for India. The question she asked, quite relevant, was: “Amul is a boring white liquid brand bought by moms. Ice cream is a fun category meant for kids and youngsters. How is Amul hoping to overcome the chasm?”

 

The team working on the brand’s new product launch decided not to dismiss her comments but opted to dive into deep consumer immersion. Teams were dispatched to observe and talk to consumers about how, why and when they consumed ice creams. 

 

The teams came back with a whole lot of video footage (those were the days when consumer insights teams used to carry little video cameras to record consumer comments). One such interview showed a mom happily giving her rather rotund son a second cup of ice cream. Why? Was it because it was fun? Was it the flavour? Or was it something else we were missing? Her logic was ‘Kaise bhi karke doodh andhar jaata hai na, achha hai na?’ (Somehow I am getting him to consume milk, isn’t that good?).

 

That was the ‘aha’ moment. 

 

Why fight the milk legacy? Why not embrace it fully? This led to the tagline ‘Real Milk. Real Ice Cream’. 

 

The team at Amul then did their magic with product formulation and distribution. Their key weapon: 

 

Value pricing. Following their tried and tested philosophy of good milk prices to dairy farmers and attractive prices to end-consumers, they priced Amul ice creams very aggressively. 

 

Amul ice cream took on HUL’s Kwality Walls and won the battle hands down. Amul’s success inspired numerous brands to flower all over India. 

 

Brands that were in ice cream, like Chennai’s Arun, branched out into milk. Hatsun Foods is today India’s largest dairy company in the private sector; like Amul they too operate on a ‘direct from dairy farmer to consumer’ philosophy. 

 

It is not as if consumers accept anything that has the Amul brand on it. Amul has had its share of flops. Their attempt at setting up pizza parlours did not pan out well, pun intended. But the company has an amazing capacity to innovate. 

 

Design Thinking is a relatively new buzz word in corporate circles. It involves quick development cycles, rapid prototyping, testing, changing, relaunching. Amul has been doing this for decades. From a boardroom discussion to the product in the market can take six months to two years in a typical FMCG company. Not so with Amul. The company can conceptualise and launch a new product within weeks. 

 

If you thought Amul was a laggard in adoption of technology, you are wrong. Their business is powered by very sound information technology (IT) practices and I am sure they have their own artificial intelligence (AI) tools now, which they are using to further sharpen their business practices. 

 

The brand has also leveraged its business ethos very well and consumers are aware that the brand is owned by a dairy cooperative. This is also used as leverage with the powers that be, with media, with trade, and more. 

 

During the pandemic the company continued to buy all the milk that dairy farmers brought to the collection centres, though demand had slowed down. Why? Simply because that is the purpose of the corporation: To help dairy farmers get a fair price for their milk. In a parallel move the brand decided to over-invest in advertising, created a live recipe channel on YouTube and even brought back nostalgia through sponsorship of Ramayana and Mahabharat on DoorDarshan. 

 

Amul achieves all this with the bare minimum song and dance. They invest a small amount in mass media advertising. Their topical ads are unique to the extent that they have given full freedom to their ad agency to execute the ad to be approved post-facto. No other brand in the world has this level of trust with its marketing communications partners (more in my book Nawabs Nudes Noodles – India Through 50 Years of Advertising). 

 

The real big weapon Amul has is consumer trust and love. The company is conscious of serving its consumers well. Good products. Nicely packaged. Attractively priced. Available nearby and across all channels. 

 

Amul hitting the trillion-rupee mark has a lot of people celebrating along with 3.6 million dairy farmers. That includes millions of customers and retailers, not to forget their business partners. May they achieve the second trillion-rupee mark in record time. 

 

---

The writer is an advertising branding veteran