It is an established fact that investment bankers love quoting lines (guilty as charged) and weaving fantastic stories. In our short stint as investment bankers, one of the lines we have repeatedly heard and quoted has been “Be smart, do not reinvent the wheel” . Among many others, this particular line is nicely embedded in our IB thesaurus and to such extent that when we thought of alternative protein, the first line that we came up with was “Be smart, reinvent the meal” . Our tryst with food, food companies, and food enthusiasts has given us many an interesting insights into aspects like food innovation, consumption patterns, sustainability of ingredients, future food trends and its impact on environment among others and in this piece, the intent is to explore the rise of the planet of alternative protein (pardon the movie references please)

From an India perspective, we have seen that the growth of plant-based or meatless protein in the last few years has not only been notable but in alignment with the global philosophy of creating a food ecosystem that is sustainable, environment friendly & most importantly doesn’t feel like a massive change to the consumer taste preferences. The interesting thing to note about India’s food ecosystem is that while it has always been acknowledged as a country with massive diversity, it has also been perceived as largely vegetarian. However, as  this  BBC piece suggests, it is a myth that India is a vegetarian country and as India marches ahead, trends clearly show that as the population of this country grows and aspects like accessibility, information exchange, product choice, it is imperative that the consumption pattern will move to meat based products. In our opinion, the significance of ideating, developing and implementing plant-based meat products is now and as we build momentum in this space, there are few elements that one needs to be thoughtful about.

Building a great product – In the food business, it is plausible and easy to get influenced by the buzz existing in the ecosystem and to catch up with trends, companies churn out products that are unable to fulfil the basic requirements like taste, grammage, looks etc. As this space grows and gains more traction, our humble belief is that companies will need to build acute focus on building products that excite customers and result in stable adoption.

Omni-channel approach – Let us put it out clearly that we don’t believe that a young business should look at an omni-channel approach from day one but our thought is that as enthusiastic and enterprising founders take on the daunting and noble mission to promote a healthy food ecosystem, the wireframe of the business should be flexible enough to adopt a multi-channel model. One of the most dynamic industries to ever exist is the food industry because it is a derivative of multiple variables and that intimately interacts with the target customer and therefore, it is imperative that the business model and operations are built to adopt to these changes. In the last 3-5 years itself, the entry of food aggregators like Swiggy and Zomato have completely disrupted the way  India eats and products that weren’t made to adopt to this model of consumption have perished or are on the verge of the same.

If customer is the king, innovation is the queen – If you are a chess fan, you definitely know that these are two most crucial pieces to ensure a win in the game. In this era of  digital penetration, information access has pivoted and influenced customer awareness to a large extent. As we mentioned above, food industry is highly dynamic and therefore, it is constantly required that the developers and participants of this game are constantly fiddling on their drawing board. A large impact of increased customer awareness is that informed decision making and in the face of informed and thoughtful decision making, it is essential that companies are endeavouring to develop products that are relevant and offer tremendous value-add with a value for money outlook.

We believe that Indian market is entering a golden period for creating products that are centred around plant based protein alternatives and cultivated meat because of increasing demand for protein led products, increased global and local awareness & need to develop a healthy and sustainable food ecosystem, growing per-capita income levels, increased participation of Government bodies with capital & advisory and finally, the drive to build a flavourful product palette by leveraging the legacy of India’s diversity. As we learn more about this space, we are certain that it will get stupendously exciting from a perspective of creating amazing businesses