Amul milk

Amul milk

Amul

Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative, based at Anand in the state of Gujarat, India

Formed in 1950, it is a brand managed by a cooperative body, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), which today is jointly owned by 3.6 million milk producers in Gujarat.

The white revolution was spearheaded by Tribhuvandas Patel under the guidance of Sardar Patel. As a result, Kaira District Milk Union Limited was born in 1946. Tribhuvan das became the founding chairman of the organization which he led till his last day of his life. He hired Dr. Kurien three years after the white revolution. He convinced Dr.Kurien to stay and help with the mission rest was history in the dairying industry.

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 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.Amul products are now available in more than 60 countries in the world.

History

Amul-coperative 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, which often went sour in summer, to Polson. The prices of milk were arbitrarily determined. Government had given monopoly rights to Polson to collect milk from Kaira 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).[8] 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, at most, 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 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 scaleled 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. This led to the search for an attractive brand name. In a brainstorming session, a chemist who worked in the dairy laboratory suggested Amul, which came from the Sanskrit word "amulya", which means "priceless" and "denoted and symbolised the pride of swadeshi production."

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.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

In 1999, it was awarded the "Best of all" Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award.

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. Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd..

Products
A can of AMUL cow ghee

Amul's product range includes milk powders, milk, butter, ghee, cheese, dahi, yoghurt, buttermilk, chocolate, ice cream, cream, biscuit , shrikhand, paneer, gulab jamuns, flavoured milk, basundi and others.

Amul's sugar-free Pro-Biotic Ice-cream won The International Dairy Federation Marketing Award for 2007

In 1966, Amul hired Sylvester daCunha, then 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.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.

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 butter girl wearing a Gandhi cap.

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.

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 missy had appeared for the first time even before that, with Eustace Fernandez showed her offering bed-time prayers with a wink and a lick of lips, saying "Give us this day our daily bread: with Amul butter". But the topical hits started flowing in since 1966