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Ghee is not such a bad thing to consume after all, but the health conscious Indian consumer wants more.Enter organic ghee. This phrase basically means ghee churned out of milk derived from 'stress free' or 'happier' cows that are put on organic diet. Players in this niche category have seen huge surge in demand, with some of them clocking as much as 400 per cent growth in sales.
Off late, with rising awareness on different types of cholesterol and demand for ghee has seen an upsurge among urban consumers, especially cow ghee has been clocking a robust growth rate, almost double of that of buffalo ghee. Cow ghee is, however, just about 10 per cent of the Rs 10,000 crore Indian ghee market.
Niche players like Organic India, Vedic Cow and Holy Cow Foundation have tried to cater to a fast growing niche category here, organic cow ghee.
Lucknow-based Organic India has seen demand for its organic ghee grow manifold in the past four years since it launched. As Saurabh Tiwari, chief marketing officer of Organic India claims that the demand for organic ghee has grown by almost 400 per cent for them in the past four years, and this is when organic ghee costs at least 40-50 per cent more than conventional ghee.
What is organic ghee? It is ghee derived out of the milk from cows who are fed an organic diet. Some like Vedic Cow Products who run an online portal to sell indigenous items like khadi, food items like ghee, honey etc, claim that it is essential that the milk is sourced from 'stress-free' cows who are not only fed well but are also allowed to roam freely, feed their calves first. Nishant Khadria, the founder of Mumbai-based Vedic Cow Products said that the quality of the milk changes when cows are stressed, as the hormones that go into the milk change dramatically. He now sources his milk from only four to five 'gaushalas' or cow farms around Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. The milk is converted into ghee at the gaushala itself, so that there is no need to refrigerate and preserve the milk.
"We only source from cows of Indian breed because ayurveda talks of benefits of ghee from Indian cows. And in the two years that we have started, we have noticed that despite selling at a strong premium (Vedic Cow's ghee is priced at Rs 1300 per kg as against Rs 450-500 a kg for conventional ghee), we continue to grow at 30 per cent year on year in terms of volumes and new customer acquisition," Khadria explained.
His firm has also started exporting to customers in the US, where people are trying to incorporate organic ghee as a part of their everyday diet.
Organic India too is business worth Rs 5-6 crore from organic ghee alone. It was selling around 1,000 bottles per month around four years back, and now it does around 14,000 bottles a month. Tiwari is vocal about the pesticide contamination which gets into our milk, and in turn, all milk products. Therefore, Organic India has ensured that the land on which these cows graze are certified organic. "It takes around three to four years to convert a land into organic. We add neem, cow dung etc apart from stopping usage of chemical pesticides altogether," he explained. Organic India is currently working with over 2,000 marginal farmers who have around 2 acre of average landholding.
It has also tied up with modern trade outlets to boost sales, however, now the company feels that there is more demand than it can supply. "We see an immediate demand of around Rs 15-20 crore for organic ghee alone from Organic India," Tiwari said. The Rs 200 crore company gets around 65 per cent of its revenues from organic tulsi, which it also exports outside India.
Brand experts feel that with the rise of the health conscious, there is demand for organic food, and ghee as a category is no exception.
