Anand Milk Union Limited or better known as Amul is regarded as a dairy cooperative movement in the Indian subcontinent. Formed in the year 1946, Amul initiated the dairy cooperative movement in India. The chairman of the GCMMF, Dr Varghese Kurien, is recognized as the man behind the success of Amul. In fact Amul was formally was registered on 14th December 1946. It also formed an apex cooperative organization called the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation. In the recent times this popular movement is being replicated in 70,000 villages in over 200 districts of India. The movement grew so popular that it was channeled towards economic prosperity. It is credited whole-heartedly or transforming the life of the Indian villagers. Not only this much, it has also made the nation the largest milk producer in the globe today.
Further its achievements lies in being one of the largest food brands in the Indian subcontinent with an annual turnover of $500 million. The products of this brand include milk, butter, ghee, chocolates, cheese, pizzas and ice creams. Amul also has plans to launch the first sports drink of the Indian subcontinent Stamina that will throw a tough competition to Coca Cola`s Powerade and PepsiCo`s Gatorade. The business of Amul is not only restricted to India. Amul has also entered the overseas markets including UAE, Mauritius, Australia, Bangladesh, Singapore, China, Hong Kong and a few South African countries. Overcoming the failure to enter the Japanese markets in 1994, it has fresh plans of entering the Japanese market soon.
The GCMMF, which is a state level apex body of milk cooperatives in the state of Gujarat and aims to provide remunerative returns to the farmers and also serve the interest of the consumers by providing quality products, has grown to be the largest organization of food products marketing in the recent times. The entry of Amul in the production of ice-cream was also regarded successful as it was capable of capturing a large market share within a very short span. Then its entry into the pizza business also proved to be a major success by making the base and the recipes available to the customers in as less a tag of 30.
The Information Technology has played a major and crucial role in the development of the Amul brand. The logistics behind the processing and producing of milk products is carried out with military-like precision. The installation of more than 3000 Automatic Milk Collection System Units (AMCUS) at village societies to capture milk fat content, member information, amount payable to each other and volume collected has proved extremely beneficial in ensuring fairness and transparency throughout the entire organization. The success of Amul in leveraging the IT to its maximum advantage lies in the simple fact that the esteemed organization had a very clear vision. Amul embraced it with much more gusto after a top-level domain cooperative was made available.
The advertising techniques of Amul have also been very eye-catching with the Amul baby commenting jovially on the latest news or the current events and the pun in her words make her even more popular. In fact the advertisements of Amul are one of the longest running ads based on a theme. They have also been vying for the Guinness records for being the longest running ad campaign ever. To sum up from catchy billboards to being an e-commerce success story, Amul is indeed rural India`s flag bearer in the IT revolution.
