June 4, 2020
The Indian ice cream industry has faced a huge losses during the Covid-19 lockdown, and are preparing to gear up new flavour variants with an idea to appeal to customers and bringing the lost demand.
The Indian ice cream industry, which is worth Rs. 10,000 crore has suffered a setback of about Rs 2,000-2,500 crore during the lockdown, according to analysts tracking the sector. Annually the months of March, April and May contributes to 40-45% of the industry’s seasonal business.
“We had meetings with the members and some market consultants, who have suggested to come up with nutritional ice creams like Chawanprash ice cream, Wheatgrass ice cream among others,” said Pradeep Pai, Managing Committee Member of Indian Ice-Cream Manufacturers Association (IICMA) and Promoter Hangyo Ice Creams Pvt Ltd.
Hangyo Ice cream has recently launched a super-premium ice cream range with flavours like rose petals, saffron carnival and plans to launch soon other exotic flavours in ice cream such as ginger lemon, tulsi and haldi.
Pai mentioned that India’s per capita ice cream consumption is rather minuscule, standing at 370-380 grams as compared to US, where it is about 22 litres per person.
“The plan is to push consumers to buy more ice cream. R&D will take at least 90 days, but companies across the industry are working on these lines,” he said.
The companies have expressed that there had been no business across the sector during the COVID-19 lockdown. The companies in the sector start stocking up in January, February for the following peak season of summers. As sales have come to a halt, stock inventories are piled up in cold storages.
The top 20 companies constitute 70% of the Rs. 10,000 crore market, while the remaining Rs. 3,000 crore is contributed by about 100 medium and small players. They are on the verge of disappearance post pandemic, said experts. In fact, fruit-based ice creams having fruit pulp in them were worth crores have been discarded during the lockdown as they have a shelf-life of 10-15 days only as opposed to regular ice creams that have a longer shelf life of 10-12 months.
Girish Pai, Director, Naturals said, “By the second week of April, we had to discard ice cream worth Rs. 2-3 crore. We are working on some new flavours. We will see the situation post the lockdown and launch them accordingly,” he added.
Jaganath M. N, Co-founder, Dairy Day Ice Cream also talked about the plans of launching new flavours. He said, “We are planning to introduce haldi, pepper and other immunity-boosting ice creams soon.”
An HUL company spokesperson said, “HUL’s Kwality Walls has seen a sharp deceleration in the ice cream category. As a result of the lockdown, our out-of-home channel remains closed. While manufacturing is continuing in a limited capacity, sales continue to be low.”
Many other ice cream companies have taken to direct home delivery of ice creams to their consumers.