Amul

This article is about the Indian dairy cooperative. For the ancient city of Āmul along the Oxus, see Türkmenabat. For the city in Iran, see Amol.

Amul (Anand Milk Union Limited)

Type	Cooperative
Industry	Dairy/FMCG
Founded	1946
Headquarters	Anand, Gujarat, India
Key people	Chairman, Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF)
Products	See complete products listing
Revenue	US$2.15 billion (2012–13)
Employees	750 employees of Marketing Arm. However, real pool consist of 3 million milk producer members
Website	www.amul.com

The Amul Plant at Anand showing the milk silos

Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative, based at Anand in the state of Gujarat, India. The word Amul(अमूल) is derived from the Sanskrit word Amulya(अमूल्य), meaning invaluable. The co-operative is also sometimes referred to as Anand Milk Union Limited.

Formed in 1946, it is a brand managed by a cooperative body, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), which today is jointly owned by 3 million milk producers in Gujarat.

Amul spurred India's White Revolution, which made the country the world's largest producer of milk and milk products. In the process Amul became the largest food brand in India and has also ventured into markets overseas.

Dr Verghese Kurien, founder-chairman of the GCMMF for more than 30 years (1973–2006), is credited with the success of Amul.

History

The Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union Ltd. was registered on 1 December 1946 as a response to the exploitation of marginal milk producers by traders or agents of the only existing dairy, the Polson (brand) dairy, in the small town of Anand (in Kaira District of Gujarat). Milk producers had to travel long distances to deliver milk, which often went sour in summer, to Polson. The prices of buffalo and cow milk were arbitrarily determined. Moreover, the government at that time had given monopoly rights to Polson to collect milk from Anand and supply it to Bombay city.

Angered by the unfair trade practices, the farmers of Kaira approached Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel under the leadership of local farmer leader Tribhuvandas K. Patel. He advised them to form a cooperative and supply milk directly to the Bombay Milk Scheme instead of Polson (who did the same but gave them low prices). He sent Morarji Desai to organise the farmers. In 1946, the milk farmers of the area went on a strike which led to the setting up of the cooperative to collect and process milk. Milk collection was decentralized, as most producers were marginal farmers who could deliver atmost 1–2 litres of milk per day. Cooperatives were formed for each village too.

The Cooperative was further developed and managed by Dr.Verghese Kurien along with H.M. Dalaya. Dalaya's innovation of making skim milk powder from buffalo milk for the first time anywhere in the world and a little later, along with Kurien's help, making it on a commercial scale, led to the first modern dairy of the cooperative at Anand, which would compete against established players in the market.

The trio's (T. K. Patel, Kurien and Dalaya's) success at the cooperative's dairy soon spread to Anand's neighbourhood in Gujarat, and within a short span, five unions in other districts – Mehsana, Banaskantha, Baroda, Sabarkantha and Surat were set up. In order to combine forces and expand the market while saving on advertising and avoid competing against each other, the GCMMF, an apex marketing body of these district cooperatives was set up in 1973. The Kaira Union which had the brand name of Amul with it since 1955, transferred it to GCMMF.

Company info

The GCMMF is the largest food products marketing organisation of India. It is the apex organisation of the Dairy Cooperatives of Gujarat. Over the last five and a half decades, Dairy Cooperatives in Gujarat have created an economic network that links more than 3.1 million village milk producers with millions of consumers in India.^{[citation needed]}

The cooperatives collect on an average 9.4^{[citation needed]} million litres of milk per day from their producer members, more than 70% of whom are small, marginal farmers and landless labourers and include a sizeable population of tribal folk and people belonging to the scheduled castes.^{[citation needed]}

The turnover of GCMMF (AMUL) during 2010–11 was 97.74 billion (US$1.8 billion). It markets the products, produced by the district milk unions in 30 dairy plants. The farmers of Gujarat own the largest state of the art dairy plant in Asia – Mother Dairy, Gandhinagar, Gujarat – which can handle 3.0 million litres of milk per day and process 160 MTs of milk powder daily.

On 18 Aug 2012, Vipul Chaudhary of Mehsana district's milk cooperative was elected chairman of GCMMF, following a court's intervention.

The three-tier "Amul Model"

The Amul Model is a three-tier cooperative structure. This structure consists of a Dairy Cooperative Society at the village level affiliated to a Milk Union at the District level which in turn is further federated into a Milk Federation at the State level. Milk collection is done at the Village Dairy Society, milk procurement and processing at the District Milk Union and milk and milk products marketing at the State Milk Federation. The structure was evolved at Amul in Gujarat and thereafter replicated all over the country under the Operation Flood Programme, it is known as the ‘Amul Model’ or ‘Anand Pattern’ of Dairy Cooperatives.

The main functions of the Amul are:

• Collection of surplus milk from the milk producers of the village, and payment based on quality and quantity,
• Providing support services to the members like veterinary first aid, artificial insemination services, cattle-feed sales, mineral mixture sales, fodder and fodder seed sales, conducting training on animal husbandry and dairying.
• Selling liquid milk for local consumers of the village,
• Supplying milk to the District Milk Union.

District Cooperative Milk Producer's Union (Dugdh Sangh)

The main functions of the Union are:

• Procurement of milk from the Village Dairy Societies of the District,
• Arranging transportation of raw milk from the VDCS to the Milk Union,
• Providing input services to the producers like veterinary care, artificial insemination services, cattle-feed sales, mineral mixture sales, fodder and fodder seed sales,
• Conducting training on cooperative development, animal husbandry and dairying for milk producers and conducting skill development and leadership development training for VDCS staff and Management Committee members,
• Providing management support to the VDCS along with supervision of its activities.
• Establish chilling centres and dairy plants for processing the milk received from the villages.
• Selling liquid milk and milk products within the District
• Process milk into milk products as per the requirement of State Marketing Federation.
• Decide on the prices of milk to be paid to milk producers as well on the prices of support services provided to members.

State Cooperative Milk Federation (Federation)

The main functions of the federation are as follows:

• Marketing of milk and milk products processed/manufactured by Milk Unions,
• Establish a distribution network for marketing of milk and milk products,
• Arranging transportation of milk and milk products from the Milk Unions to the market,
• Creating and maintaining a brand for marketing of milk & milk products,
• Providing support services to the Milk Unions and members like technical inputs, management support and advisory services,
• Pooling surplus milk from the Milk Unions and supplying it to deficit Milk Unions,
• Establish feeder-balancing dairy plants for processing the surplus milk of the Milk Unions,
• Arranging for common purchase of raw materials used in manufacture/packaging of milk products,
• Decide on the prices of milk and milk products to be paid to Milk Unions,
• Decide on the products to be manufactured at Milk Unions and capacity required for the same,
• Conduct long-term milk production, procurement and processing as well as marketing planning.
• Arranging finance for the Milk Unions and providing them technical know-how.
• Designing and providing training in cooperative development and technical and marketing functions.
• Conflict resolution and keeping the entire structure intact.

Today, there are around 176 cooperative dairy Unions formed by 1.25 lakh dairy cooperative societies, having a total membership of around 13 million farmers on the same pattern, who are processing and marketing milk and milk products profitably, be it Amul in Gujarat or Verka in Punjab, Vijaya in Andhra Pradesh, Milma in Kerala, Gokul in Maharashtra, Saras in Rajasthan or a Nandini in Karnataka. This process has created more than 190 dairy processing plants spread all over India with large investments by these farmers’ institutions. These cooperatives today collect approximately 23 million kgs. of milk per day and pay an aggregate amount of more than Rs.125 billion to the milk producers in a year^{[citation needed]}.

Impact of the "Amul Model"

The effects of Operation Flood Programme are appraised by the World Bank in its recent evaluation report. It has been proved that an investment of Rs. 20 billion over 20 years under Operation Flood Programme in 70s & 80s has contributed in increase of India’s milk production by 40 Million Metric Tonne (MMT) i.e. from about 20 MMT in pre- Operation Flood period to more than 60 MMT at the end of Operation flood Programme.

Thus, an incremental return of Rs. 400 billion annually have been generated by an investment of Rs. 20 billion over a period of 20 years. India’s milk production continues to increase and now stands at 90 MMT. Despite this fourfold increase in milk production, there has not been drop in the prices of milk during the period and has continued to grow.

Due to this movement, the country’s milk production tripled between the years 1971 to 1996. Similarly, the per capita milk consumption doubled from 111 gms per day in 1973 to 222 gm per day in 2000.

Achievements of GCMMF

• 3.1 million milk producer member families
• 15,760 village societies
• 15 District Unions
• 9.4 million liters of milk procured per day
• 150 million (US$2.7 million) disbursed in cash daily
• GCMMF is the largest cooperative business of small producers with an annual turnover of 53 billion (US$970 million)
• The government of India has honoured Amul with the "Best of all categories Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award".
• Largest milk handling capacity in Asia
• Largest cold chain network
• 48 sales offices, 5000 wholesale distributors, 7 lakh retail outlets
• Export to 37 countries worth 150 crore (US$27 million)
• Winner of APEDA award for eleven consecutive years

The Amul brand

GCMMF (AMUL) has the largest distribution network for any FMCG company. It has nearly 50 sales offices spread all over the country, more than 5000 wholesale dealers and more than 700000 retailers.

Amul became the world's largest vegetarian cheese and the largest pouched-milk brand.

AMUL is also the largest exporter of dairy products in the country. AMUL is available today in over 40 countries of the world. AMUL is exporting a wide variety of products which include whole and skimmed milk powder, cottage cheese (Paneer), UHT milk, clarified butter (Ghee) and indigenous sweets.

The major markets are USA, West Indies, and countries in Africa, the Gulf Region, and SAARC neighbours, Singapore, The Philippines, Thailand, Japan and China, and others such as Mauritius, Australia, Hong Kong and a few South African countries. Its bid to enter the Japanese market in 1994 did not succeed, but it plans to venture again.

In September 2007, Amul emerged as the leading Indian brand according to a survey by Synovate to find out Asia's top 1000 Brands.

In 2011, Amul was named the Most Trusted brand in the Food and Beverages sector in The Brand Trust Report, published by Trust Research Advisory. rediff.com; "India's top 20 brands: Amul is No. 1"

Products

Amul's product range includes milk powders, milk, butter, ghee, cheese, Masti Dahi, Yoghurt, Buttermilk, chocolate, ice cream, cream, shrikhand, paneer, gulab jamuns, flavoured milk, basundi, Amul Pro brand and others. Amul PRO is a recently launched brown beverage just like bournevita and horlicks offering whey protein, DHA and essential nutrients. In January 2006, Amul launched India's first sports drink Stamina, which competes with Coca Cola's Powerade and PepsiCo's Gatorade.

Amul also offers mithaimate which competes with Milkmaid by Nestle by offering more fat% at lower price.

In August 2007, Amul introduced Kool Koko, a chocolate milk brand extending its product offering in the milk products segment. Other Amul brands are Amul Kool, a low calorie thirst quenching drink; Masti Butter Milk; Kool Cafe, ready to drink coffee and India's first sports drink Stamina.

Amul's icecreams are made from milk fat and thus are icecreams in real sense of the word, while many brands in India sell frozen desserts made from vegetable fat.

Amul's sugar-free Pro-Biotic Ice-cream won The International Dairy Federation Marketing Award for 2007.^{[citation needed]}

Mascot

Since 1967 Amul products' mascot has been the very recognisable "Amul baby" or Amul girl (a chubby butter girl usually dressed in polka dotted dress) showing up on hoardings and product wrappers with the tagline Utterly Butterly Delicious Amul. The mascot was first used for Amul butter. But in recent years in a second wave of ad campaign for Amul products, she has also been used for other products like ghee and milk.

Advertising

An Amul butter ad on Pakistan's Kargil War fiasco. The image shows the "Amul baby" in between George Fernandes and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

In 1966, Amul hired Sylvester daCunha, then managing director of the advertising agency AS to design an ad campaign for Amul Butter. daCunha designed an ad campaign as series of hoardings with topical ads, relating to day-to-day issues. The campaign was popular and earned a Guinness world record for the longest running ad campaign in the world. In the 1980s, cartoon artist Kumar Morey and script writer Bharat Dabholkar had been involved with sketching the Amul ads; the latter rejected the trend of using celebrities in advertisement campaigns. Dabholkar credited chairman Verghese Kurien with creating a free atmosphere that fostered the development of the ads.

Despite encountering political pressure on several occasions, daCunha's agency has made it a policy of not backing down. Some of the more controversial Amul ads include one commenting on Naxalite uprising in West Bengal, on the Indian Airlines employees strike, and the one depicting the Amul butter girl wearing a Gandhi cap

Amul hired DraftFCB+Ulka for the brands of Amul milk, chocolates, paneer, ghee, ice-cream.

In popular culture

The establishment of Amul is also known as White Revolution. The White Revolution of India inspired the notable Indian film-maker Shyam Benegal to base his film Manthan (1976) on it. The film starred Smita Patil, Girish Karnad, Naseeruddin Shah and Amrish Puri. The film itself was financed by over five lakh rural farmers in Gujarat who contributed Rs 2 each to the film's budget. Upon its release, these same farmers went in truckloads to watch 'their' film, making it a commercial success., the film was chosen for the 1977 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi.

References

≈==External links==

• amul.com, Official website
• irma.ac.in, History of Amul
• amul.tv
• thehindubusinessline.com
• indiainfoline.com, "AMUL Most Trusted among India’s Food & Beverage Brands"

Amul is one of the leading milk federation in India