July 19, 2021
Ice cream industry dented with an aggregate loss of around Rs. 12,000 crore since March 2020
Good ice cream is never too sweet, doesn’t hurt your teeth, and shouldn’t make you feel thirsty. Ice cream sale is highest during summers and loved by consumers endlessly, but the industry has already lost two peak ice cream-selling seasons of April, May, and June to lockdowns. The time has come to be prepared for the worst. One can only hope the third wave doesn’t happen.
The ice cream industry, an unorganized sector with close to 3,000 players, is reportedly pegged around an annual turnover of Rs. 10,000 crore. Maximum sales take place between March and September. Last year, headlines repeated the same story everywhere, “Ice cream industry in meltdown”, with estimates pitching losses at Rs. 6,000 crore due to lockdowns. Sales were down with rumor-mongering that eating ice cream increases chances of catching COVID-19, even with WHO officially stating there was no scientific evidence for this.
Cumulative loss since March 2020 now amounts to around Rs. 12,000 crore, according to experts. “Summer is the critical sales season, so production needs to start two to three months in advance. However, with the lockdown affecting local transport, labour and other logistics, ice-cream makers were forced to sit on this massive inventory.
Experts are giving their opinions about the third wave, but according to Sudhir Shah, president of Ahmedabad-based Indian Ice-Cream Manufacturers Association (IICMA) and managing director of Scoops ice cream in Hyderabad, the whole thing depends on two things: the rate of COVID-19 vaccinations and adherence to COVID-appropriate behavior by the public.
A lesson many of us had to learn the hard way over the last year and a half is that an online point-of-sale is mandatory for any business today,” says Shah, stressing how IICMA members have to become more creative in reaching customers and newer markets apart from designing campaigns and promotions to cope with declining sales.
“Cooperation goes a long way in keeping a business afloat. Ice cream companies who are not part of the IICMA should consider joining since companies can benefit from various synergies,” adds Shah. Kwality Wall’s, Naturals, Cream Bell, Vadilal, Havmor are some of the brands represented in the 80-member strong collective of IICMA.
With the second wave slipping out, there is definitely an enhanced buoyancy. India’s revolutionary artisanal brand, Naturals ice cream, lost 86 per cent of sales in peak summer months of 2020, compared to 2019 figures, but company representatives’ report that June this year witnessed their best sales for any month since COVID-19, indicating a positive trend in the coming months when they hope to reach pre-COVID sales.
In the last year and a half, they have employed innovative strategies to stay on top of consumers’ minds. “We launched our ‘Tough Tub’ campaign, assuring our consumers that our family packs are safe and cannot be tampered with. The other two important decisions we took was first, partner with cloud kitchen operators to sell our ice cream online to places where there are no Naturals outlets available. And secondly, have a direct-to-order platform ready to cater to customers who prefer having end-to-end experience with Naturals and avoid additional charges that online aggregators added,” says Srinivas Kamath, director of Kamaths Ourtimes Ice Creams Pvt Ltd, the company which owns Naturals Ice Cream.
Interestingly, while most of the established brands have struggled with losses. The lockdown saw a surge in small-batch, boutique ice cream brands, which catered to consumers directly from their websites and social media handles. New-age brands like Emoi started selling at select retail stores, Big Basket, 24seven, among others. Many turned icecreamists in lockdown, found patrons by highlighting their handcrafted, no-stabilizers/emulsifiers/artificial flavours credentials. Gurugram-based mother-daughter duo, Ritu Gupta (50) and Mridu Gupta (24), started hand-churning ice cream in their kitchens around April last year for friends and family.
By June 2020, when the lockdown lifted, they were ready with their weekend company MG’s Handmade Ice Creams curating little-known flavours on a WhatsApp circulated menu with close to 100 orders a month. “This year we resumed operations after lockdown and June 2021 has been the best month where we earned the maximum profit with 150 tubs which cost Rs 650 apiece,” says Mridu, a fashion stylist.
Point to ponder
How did one make ice cream before refrigerators? One of the more popular ways was the pot-freezer method which French cooks loved to use. A laborious enterprise, where ice was chunked out of lakes and ponds in the winter months, it would then be stored in the ground or brick ice houses with straw providing the much-needed insulation. In the French pot method, a bowl of cream was placed in a bucket of ice and salt and churned still frozen. Come 1843, the hand-cranked churn, patented by Nancy Johnson, replaced the pot for a faster, smoother finish.