How Amul fought against the British monopoly and established a 12 billion dollar brand.
There was a time when farmers used to throw milk on the streets. The proper amount of revenue prices never existed for them. The middle men used to buy milk from dairy farmers at a lower price and sell it at a better price in the city. Most of the traders were British-based traders, who tried to exploit farmers with low wages for their hard work. The milk used to get spoiled within one day. This created huge unrest among farmers.
All the farmers visited Sardar vallabhbhai Patel expressing their grief. He was a tall leader at that time. Everybody finally decided to start a cooperative dairy with minimal support and removal of middle men. The British restricted this move to start a new cooperative system. The farmers protested against the British to stop this injustice, but the British tried strategies to stop the farmers, but guess what, the farmers did not quit. The protest was successful after a long time. The farmers celebrated that their lives would be changed by getting justice to their hardwork.
Finally, a cooperative was started and was running successfully on the local scale. The Britishers tried to ruin that with proxy rumours and disturbances from traders, speaking ill about the cooperative. The farmers who enrolled could collect the milk but could not reproduce the milk effectively.
The rumours of fraud and ineffective management spread effectively.
The role of Verghese Kurien, the man behind the White Revolution, worked near the dairy cooperative, understood the problem of the farmers and dedicated himself to this mission. After a few years of dedication, he changed the entire cooperative structure by creating new product designs like wastage of milk was further turned into butter, sweets, curd and better utility products, which became a huge demand. The Amul used an impressive strategy, exactly like Polson dairy, which had a monopoly of milk products and completely under British control.
The Amul brand was established with the same marketing strategy as Polson. The Amul girl, who quickly became immensely popular across India, Verghese Kurien, keenly looked into the quality of the products and focused on effective measures of the cooperative. As time passed, Amul dominated the dairy products market.
Today, Amul is worth 12 billion dollars, 36 lakhs farmers registered, 31 million tons of milk received by Amul everyday. They have 87 branches, with a 15000 dealer network,1 million retailers and 1200 products. Amul is the most trusted brand in the dairy industry and buying products from Amul helps our indian farmers. From a small village to a brand worth billions is truly inspirational jourey of Amul.
