Amul

Amul is an Indian cooperative dairy

company, based at Anand in the state of
Gujarat.[3]
 Amul

Type Cooporative society

Industry Dairy/fast-moving
consumer good
(FMCG)

Founded 1946

Founder Tribhuvandas Patel

Headquarters Anand, Gujarat, India

Area served Worldwide

Key people Rupinder Singh Sodhi
(Managing Director)[1]

Revenue ₹38,000 crore

(US$5.5 billion) (2018-

[ ]
 19 [2])
Number of employees 752 (Marketing Arm)
3.6 million (Milk
producing members)[2]

Website www.amul.com/  

The Amul plant at Anand, Gujarat showing the milk

silos

Formed in 1956, it is a cooperative brand

managed by a cooperative body, the
Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing
Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), which today is
jointly owned by 3.6 million milk producers
in Gujarat.[4]

Amul spurred India's White Revolution,

which made the country the world's largest
producer of milk and milk products.[5]

Amul was spearheaded by Tribhuvandas

Patel under the guidance of Sardar Patel.
As a result, Kaira District Milk Union
Limited was born in 1946. Tribhuvandas
became the founding chairman of the
organization and led it until his death. He
hired Dr. Verghese Kurien in 1949. He
convinced Dr. Kurien to stay and help with
the mission.
Kurien, founder-chairman of the GCMMF
for more than 30 years (1973–2006), is
credited with the success of Amul's
marketing.[6] Amul has ventured into
markets overseas.

History
Amul cooperative registered on 14
December 1946 as a response to the
exploitation of marginal milk producers by
traders or agents of the only existing dairy,
the Polson dairy, in the small city
distances to deliver milk, often went sour
in summer, to Polson. The prices of milk
were arbitrarily determined. The
government had given monopoly rights to
Polson to collect milk from Kaira and
supply it to Mumbai city.[7][8]

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
(Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers'
Union) and supply milk directly to the
Bombay Milk Scheme instead of Polson
(who did the same but gave them low
prices).[9] 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.[8] Milk collection
was decentralized, as most producers
were marginal farmers who could deliver,
at most, 1–2 litres of milk per day.
Cooperatives were formed for each village,
too.[10] By June 1948, the KDCMPUL had
started pasteurizing milk for the 'Bombay
Milk Scheme'. Under the selfless
leadership of Tribhuvandas Patel, in 1973,
Amul celebrated its 25th Anniversary with
Morarji Desai, Maniben Patel and
Verghese Kurien.

The cooperative was further developed

and managed by Dr. Verghese Kurien with
H.M. Dalaya. Dalaya's innovation of
making skim milk powder from buffalo
milk (for the first time in the world) and a
little later, with Kurien's help, making it on a
commercial scale,[11] led to the first
modern dairy of the cooperative at Anand,
which would compete against established
players in the market. Kurien's brother-in-
law K.M. Philip sensitized Kurien to the
needs of attending to the finer points of
marketing, including the creation and
popularization of a brand.

The trio's (T. K. Patel, Kurien and Dalaya's)

success at the cooperative's dairy soon
spread to Anand's neighbourhood in
Gujarat. Within a short span, five unions in
other districts – Mehsana, Banaskantha,
Baroda, Sabarkantha and Surat – were set
up, following the approach sometimes
described as the Anand pattern.[8]

In 1970, initiated White Revolution of India,

as it help create, Gujarat Co-operative Milk
Marketing Federation Ltd., which now
overlooks Amul, in 1973,[12] and today, it is
the second best dairy in India.[12] 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
Amul with it since 1955, transferred it to
GCMMF.[13]

In 1999, it was awarded the "Best of all"

Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award.[14]

Technological developments at Amul have

subsequently spread to other parts of
India.

The GCMMF is the largest food products

marketing organisation of India. It is the
apex organisation of the dairy
cooperatives of Gujarat. It is the exclusive
marketing organisation for products under
the brand name of Amul and Sagar. 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 products with
millions of consumers in India.

On September 30, 2018, Prime Minister

Narendra Modi inaugurated Amul's
chocolate plant in Mogar, Anand near their
headquarters.[15]

UHT products and impact

Over the years, Amul has been witnessing
growth in this portfolio, with the segment
growing at 53%. Long life UHT products
for urban populations, like Amul Taaza,
which are packed in Tetra Pak cartons
undergo UHT treatment to remove all
harmful micro-organisms while retaining
the nutrition in the milk. Amul sells around
4,00,000-5,00,000 litres of UHT milk and
other value added products per day and
forecasts this demand to continue
growing at 25%. The UHT products have
enabled Amul to position itself as the
market leader in packaged milk segment
without the need of maintaining cold
supply chains.[16]

Advertising
In 1966, Amul hired Sylvester da Cunha,
the managing director of the advertising
agency as to design an ad campaign for
Amul Butter. DaCunha designed a
campaign as series of hoardings with
topical ads, relating to day-to-day
issues.[17] It 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.[18]

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 the Naxalite
uprising in West Bengal, on the Indian
Airlines employees strike, and one
depicting the Amul girl wearing a Gandhi
cap.[17]

In 2013, Amul tweeted a picture featuring

the Amul butter girl, implying that 'freedom
of choice' died in '2013', in opposition to
the Supreme Court of India overruling the
judgment of Delhi High Court and
criminalising homosexuality again.[19]

On 17 October 2016, Amul butter girl

celebrated 50 years when she first
appeared in the topical ad titled
"Thoroughbread". The ad showed a jockey
holding a slice of bread during the horse
race season in 1966. The impish Amul girl
had appeared for the first time even before
that, with Eustace Fernandez showed her
offering bedtime prayers with a wink and a
lick of lips, saying "Give us this day our
daily bread: with Amul butter".[20]
Their Ad on Aagey Badhta Hai India had an
excellent response from the audience. It
basically spoke about how their Milk is
seen as a household product with catchy
tune associated to it. It has close to 2
Million views on YouTube. [21].

In popular culture
The establishment of Amul is known as
White Revolution.

The White Revolution inspired the notable

Indian film-maker Shyam Benegal to base
his film Manthan (1976) on it. The film was
financed by over five lakh (half a million)
rural farmers in Gujarat who contributed
Rs 2 each to its budget. Upon its release,
these farmers went in truckloads to watch
'their' film, making it a commercial
success.[22][23] Manthan was chosen for
the 1977 National Film Award for Best
Feature Film in Hindi.

See also
Anikspray, a popular competitive brand
developed by Lipton and HLL, and later
sold to other companies

References
1. "Shri RS Sodhi - NDDB Foundation for
Nutrition" . www.nfn.org.in. Retrieved
30 March 2019.
2. "Amul/Organisation" . Amul.com.
3. Alexander Fraser Laidlaw.
Cooperatives and the Poor. A
development study prepared for the
International Cooperative Alliance and
the Canadian International
Development Agency, 1977. The co-
operative was initially referred to as
Anand Milk Federation Union Limited,
hence the name AMUL.
4. The Amul Story – General
Management Review Archived 4
December 2005 at the Wayback
Machine
5. indiadairy.com . indiadairy.com.
Retrieved on 2015-11-29.
6. Dasgupta, Manas (9 September 2012).
" 'Kurien strode like a titan across the
bureaucratic barriers and obstacles' " .
The Hindu. Chennai, India. Retrieved
13 September 2012.
7. George, Shanti (1985). Operation
flood: an appraisal of current Indian
pairy policy. Delhi: Oxford University
Press. ISBN 978-0-19-561679-8.
8. Heredia, Ruth (1997). The Amul India
story. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill.
9. Suhrud, Tridip (8 April 2006). "The
magic of manthan" . Tehelka. Archived
 from the original on 11 November
2006. Retrieved 2 February 2011.
10. Thapar, Romila (2001). "Seminar,
Issues 497–508". Seminar.
11. "Economic and political weekly,
Volume 6, Part 4". Economic and
Political Weekly. 6. 1971.
12. Cooperatives : Cause & Effect
13. The Cheese Industry in India.
Chillibreeze.
14. SHRAWAN (29 May 2013). "Annex iv:
list of award winners of Rajiv Gandhi
national quality awards" (PDF).
bis.org.in. New Delhi: Bureau of Indian
Standards. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
15. Pathak, Maulik (30 September 2018).
"PM Modi inaugurates LNG terminal,
chocolate factory in Gujarat" . Live
Mint. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
16. Amul UHT: On a Quest for Zero
adulterated milk | Watch the video –
Yahoo India Archived 2 January 2014
at the Wayback Machine.
In.news.yahoo.com. Retrieved on
2015-11-29.
17. Varma, Mini. "The moppet who put
Amul on India's breakfast table" .
Amul. Retrieved 2 February 2011.
18. Rao, Subha J. (15 December 2007).
"Punch guru" . The Hindu. Chennai,
 India. Retrieved 2 February 2011.
19. "Brands peek out of the closet – The
Times of India" . The Times Of India.
20. "In pics Fifty years on, Amul's 'utterly
butterly' girl is still a delight" .
NewsKarnataka. 17 October 2016.
21. Amul The Taste of India (10 July
2015), Amul Milk - Aage Badta Hai
India , retrieved 9 April 2019
22. NDTV movies NDTV.
23. Shyam Benegal at ucla.net South Asia
Studies, University of California, Los
Angeles (UCLA).

External links
 Wikimedia Commons has media
related to Amul.

Official website
Amul Ice Cream Website
irma.ac.in , history of Amul
thehindubusinessline.com
indiainfoline.com , "AMUL Most Trusted
among India’s Food & Beverage Brands"
The First step: formation of Kaira union
AMUL's 25th Anniversary Celebrations

Retrieved from
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title=Amul&oldid=915512364"

Last edited 17 days ago by KNHaw

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