By Sulagna Dutta
India is a country of diversity. Diverse cultures and people bond over food and festivities. The common ingredient of celebration is sweets, the most auspicious bliss in the Indian culture. The traditional Indian sweets market is estimated to be 49000 Cr INR. Zomato, the food ordering app conducted a survey during the October month which is the month of maximum festivities and it reported that the diverse consumption across cities where Bengaluru tood first in the consumption %.
Source: Paper on Importance of sweetness in indian diet and vehicle for satisfying sweet taste: Sugar ; by Dr. Seema Puri, associate professor, Institute of Home Economics, University of Delhi
Not just in festivities, sweets are consumed on a daily basis in an Indian house hold. Aiding with the carbohydrate rich diet, this makes India the Diabetes capital of the world where 17% of the population suffers from diabetes.
After COVID-19 kicked in, the need to prioritise our health and immune system became crucial. Lifestyle diseases became a major cause of concern for comorbidity, and the comorbid population faced the 2X threat of mortality, if
affected with Covid-19. The only way forward was to cater to the changing times by healthifying the food we eat. We tried working towards this in the Indian sweets segment and faced with grass-root level challenges, like:
1. Resistant Food Handlers: Our local mithaiwalas’ shop is the one-stop destination for our day-to-day sugar cravings and the festive sugar rush.
The recipe and the art of making those sugar syrup filled crispy jalebis’ and mouth-watering gulaab jamuns’ are passed down from generation to generation. The majority of the handlers lack education. This becomes a very difficult task for the educated technologists to fight the resistance that comes from them in accepting the changes, specifically in gredients.
2. Indulgent Consumers: The concept of permissible indulgence is new to India, but it is growing slowly. In tier II and tier III cities, people mostly consume sweets to satiate their taste buds. They are not mindful of the high calorie, glycaemic index, the sugar influx, or the sugar addiction. It is expected to be consumed as indulgence. A very small percentage of people are convinced that healthy sweets can be interesting and exciting too. The real challenge here is to perfectly mimic our sugar laden sweets using healthier ingredients so that they hit those receptors in the consumer’s brain and make them keep coming back for more.
3. Price Sensitive market: The use of sugar substitutes such as stevia, jaggery, date sugar, honey, fructooligosaccharide, etc. raises the overall cost of the sweet. The price competition lies between the Rs. 35/Kg Sugar Vs. Rs. 3000/Kg Stevia or Rs. 350/Kg FOS. However Jaggery came out to be a sustainable offering but the sensory parameters faced different challenges. India is a price-sensitive market, and thus even a marginal rise in the cost of the product decreases its demand and profitability. Something new in the market with higher cost faces its basic resistance and gets cornered in the showcase.
4. Lack of awareness: According to the World Health Organisation guidelines, not more than 10% of our daily energy intake should come from added sugars, as they are the major cause of the increase in diabetes and obesity rates. Despite this, there is not much awareness around healthy snacking; terminologies like low GI, low calorie, diabetic friendly are not very popular among the masses. Despite efforts by government bodies to draw people’s attention to healthy indulgence in sweets, there is still a huge gap between the concept and the consumers.
5. Low volume segment: The scepticism of consumers and lack of awareness among most people regarding healthy versions of sweets, the volume of the segment is low. Any newer, healthier variety of the already existing sweet is not welcomed in the market with open arms. Thus, business owners dealing in this segment are mostly sceptical about experimenting on the healthy alternatives to the popular sweets. However, there are trends observed in some part of the tier I cities where the Indian sweets are prepared using healthier alternates like pure ghee, Fructooligosaccharide (FOS), jaggery etc. Popular sweet chain Owners and decision makers are talking about low glycaemic index, antioxidants, diabetic friendly, weight management, heathy indulgence etc. Ingredients like FOS have started moving, however, slowly, in the traditional sweet segment. There is an enormous room for the wellness industry to grow in the indulgence segment like Indian sweets. The growth of content marketing, the use of smart phone technology has made availability of information on our finger tips. So, the right intent in the industry will definitely iterate and find the best alternative towards health and alternate sweetness. And the change will come soon.
