Business Plan - Packaged Food

1. Marketing growth potential

As stated in economics times, the packaged food market in India is set to increase from $32 billion at present to $50 billion by 2017 due to increasing popularity of ready-to-eat items. As per The Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India (Assocham), there has been a movement in food consumption habits in India and about 79% of households prefer to have instant food due to significant rise in l income levels, standard of living and convenience. Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat stated that packaged food consumption is much higher in urban cities where life is fast-paced hence it is attracting lot more companies to launch new types of products and variants for its consumers. About 76% nuclear families in India feel the need for packaged food as they have less time to spend in the kitchen due to hectic work life and nearly 79% bachelors prefer convenience food. The economics times poll also highlighted that 76% of working parents, with children under five-years in the big cities, are serving easy-to-prepare meals at least 10-12 times per month in some form or the other. It is in this context that it is worthwhile to invest in manufacturing new innovative ready to eat food products for the rising consumer class in India.

The competition

No direct competitor has been found with a strategy combining self-heating technology to ready to eat meals. There are indirect competitors that aim to sell ready to eat food products within the Indian market. Brands like MTR, Ashirvaad, Kitchens of India and Gits hold a huge market share for processed ready to eat food products in India. But the food offered through them needs to be heated and in absence of a microwave or gas the food cannot be consumed. This is where we aim to tackle the problem of heating the food by self-heating food technology used while packaging and considering a country with such a large population there is a huge growth potential for ready to eat self-heating food and drink items.

2.1 Macro Environmental factors effecting the Ready-to-eat food market in India – PESTLE Analysis

Political – India is a politically stable economy where the government has made it clear that they would permit 100% FDI in the automatic route for most food products. The Indian government announced setting up of special fund of INR 2,000 Crore in the Financial year 2014-15 in NABARD for extending affordable credit to designated food parks and the individual processing units at concessional rates and fund is being continued in 2015-16 (Makeinindia, 2015). As per the union budget 2015-2016 there is 100% tax exemption for the first five years’ and after that, at the rate of 25% of the profits being exempted from tax for the next five years of operation and the excise duty on packing machinery is reduced from 10% to 6%.

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