#Story Board
Butter which supplied milk to the Bombay Milk Scheme.
The Iron man of India came up with a self-corrective
idea of direct selling to the market and made the farmers
revolt against the system by forming a co-operative in
1955.
Milkman's Mission
When Kurien joined the co-operative after its
inception as Anand Milk Union Limited, there was no
stepping back in terms of growth or market share.
Kurien wore the cap of a jockey in riding Amul not just
to reach success but also to bring the necessary change
in rural economy which helped them to attain agroeconomic balance without rural migration and from
subsidiary occupation.
Churned the hurdles into products
The Bombay milk scheme could not collect the
extra milk produced in winter, which repeated the
earlier cycle of selling it to the middlemen. And just like
Hanuman came H. M. Dalaya to rescue the farmers
from excess produce by converting it to skimmed milk
powder which was an innovation in the dairy industry
and helped them to compete with other brands.
Once the band was formed, it was time for music!! So
the success of the trio (Patel, Kurien & Dalaya) spread
to other nearby districts of Mehsana, Banaskantha,
Baroda, Sabarkantha and Surat. By then they were able
to produce 5000 litres of milk a day and an apex body
was needed to market and distribute and process the
INM MAGAZINE VOLUME 8 | FEBRUARY 2016
products. Thus, these co-operatives planned to expand
their market share by saving the advertising cost and
formed the apex body called GCMMF which acquired
the brand name AMUL from Kaira union.
The Road Not Taken
With time GCMMF became the largest food
marketing organisation and exporter of dairy products
in India, enjoying the status of being the most widereaching distribution network for an FMCG company.
As written by Robert Frost in his poem “The Road Not
Taken”, it's the path chosen by them which helped them
to achieve this feat. Every obstacle they came across in
their path was viewed by them as an opportunity to
grow and learn. They believed in holistic growth and
took adequate steps in all verticals of the industry right
from providing veterinary services to livestock, building
a healthy cattle livestock through artificial
insemination, bringing in the state-of-the-art
technology to process large quantities and marketing
them.
Innovative Business Model
It is really interesting to know how they have
managed milk producers (3.5 million) of large
magnitude unde