Marketing strategy of Specialty flours:

Consumption in India is in sync with the international trend of a natural and balanced intake.
Healthy foods and nutraceuticals form the major chunk of the healthy consumption in India.
Tracking personalised user information through apps and smart devices has opened up
possibilities for more novel and tailored products such as wellness-goal-based diet charts and
allergen-free meals. 

Over 90% of the current demand comes from the top 7 metros but with the rising awareness and
increasing disposable income, the category is expected to penetrate in tier 2 and 3 cities in the
next 5 years. A study mentions that 45% of Indian respondents following vegetarian diets and
16% following vegan diets. And about 57% of the millennials dining out two or more times a
week consumers prefer eating healthy.

 With a rising number of consumers adopting a healthy consumption in metro and tier 1 cities,
suppliers are expanding distribution to tier 2 and 3 cities majorly for food products like green tea,
edible health oils.

Consumers are looking at labels on packaged food and are willing to pay more for products that
make the cut. This is especially true of products with added nutrients, rather than products with
low fat or gluten content.

According to research conducted by neilsen, a granular view of the geographies that are driving
the shift towards health and wellness foods, shows that the south India is the earliest to adopt the
trend, followed by the east. The west and north will need some encouragement from
manufacturers to follow suit.

In big cities like Delhi, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Bangalore, people are also demanding gluten-free
pizza, pasta and noodles. Few exclusive gluten-free restaurants also opened in big cities of India.
Northern India is majorly wheat consuming belt, thus potential of gluten-free food is maximum
there.

In India, the gluten-free products are only available at some online marketplaces like Amazon,
Naturally Yours, Greencart etc or at specialty stores such as Godrej Nature’s Basket, Foodhall
and HyperCity, among others.

Jiwa: JIWA products are available in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad,
but largely on online retail stores and only a few offline stores. Gupta, however, discloses that
JIWA gluten-free flour sells as much as the brand’s multi-grain variant.

TWF: The Brand founders noticed different profiles. Some people would buy 10 kilograms every
20 days: usually if it was a family of four or five. Customers from the West or South India would
consume that much in 45 days. TWF allows their customers to automated their own consumer
purchase which earned them their customer base. And they provide freshly grinded flours.
TWF’s strength is its obsession with freshness. Kumar, founder of TWF says this also means
their products are more nutritious, as they have more fibre. TWF offers three varieties of
unadulterated, unbleached and unprocessed wheat flour. There’s organic Indie flour, Highland
flour made with sharbati wheat from the Malwa plateau, and an heirloom flour called Relique,
made with a 10,000-year-old wheat strain.

TWF has serviced 26 States/Union Territories in April. They believe they have reached a
product-market fit with their product range and the next goal is to get into hyper growth phase.
Delhi NCR is their biggest client base, followed by Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune.

Food labeling:
Food labeling is one of the important population-based approaches that can help consumers
make healthy food choices by providing the necessary information about the food on the
packaging. The food label is one of the most important and direct means of communication of
product information between buyers and sellers.

Nutritional labeling was identified as a key factor driving consumer appeal - 81% of consumers
said that the ‘clear display of nutritional information on pack’was an important element to them
when choosing to purchase food and grocery items. Consumers in recent days have more
nutrition information due to expanded food labeling mandated by the Government of India.

In most countries food labeling is subject to regulations. These regulations prevent false
advertising and assist in promoting food safety. In India, food labeling is governed by the Food
Safety and Standards Act, 2006 (34 of 2006). Previously, packaged foods sold in Indian markets
were labeled only with the product name, manufacturer's name and address, amount of product in
the package, its ingredients and date of expiry. But presently, nutrient content declaration has
been made mandatory on all pre-packaged foods.

Clean label:
Clean label is a growing opportunity globally owing to the health concerns over adverse health
effects of artificial ingredients and increasing consumer awareness on the use of consumer-
friendly ingredients that are natural, organic, allergen free, non-GMO etc.

The Transparency Imperative 2018, a study by the Food Manufacturers Institute (FMI) and Label
Insight, shows that 93per cent consumers believe it is important that brands provide them with
detailed information about the ingredients that are present in the food that they eat. 74per cent of
consumers also says that they will switch brands if they find an alternate brand that gives them
in-depth information about the product.
Most of the consumers (about 92 %) reported that they read food labels, of them about 40 %
reported that they always checked food labels before buying pre-packaged foods. When asked
why they checked food labels, safety (84 %) and genuineness/quality (45 %) were reported to be
the major concerns; while only a fifth of them checked food labels for nutrition information

Brand name (85 %) was the aspect most commonly checked by consumers, followed by date of
expiry/best before date (80 %). The least checked was the list of ingredients (20 %) and less than
40 % of the consumers across the age groups reported that they checked ‘nutrition information’
on the food labels

The majority of consumers (61 %) felt that labels were always useful, while 30 % felt that they
were useful only sometimes in choosing foods. Most consumers (58 %) felt that the information
provided on food labels was adequate. 97% claim to look at nutrition information on pack at
least some of the time and 63% claim to look regularly.

.Sources:

 https://redseer.com/reports/indian-habit-of-being-healthy/#:~:text=Currently%2C
%20India%20is%20home%20to,very%20high%20in%20consumers%20psyche.
 http://www.businessworld.in/article/Wellness-Industry-In-India-What-Does-The-Future-
Hold-/26-05-2018-149799/
 https://www.nielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/04/nielsen-featured-insights-
india-acquires-a-taste-for-health-and-wellness.pdf
 https://www.indiaretailing.com/2016/02/19/food/food-grocery/gluten-free-the-big-
specialty-food-opportunity/
 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/the-wheat-flour-dynamic-stone-mills-
grind-wheat-only-after-order-is-placed/article24103605.ece