December marks a significant moment for Progressive Grocer as its publishers the IMAGES Group convene the leaders of India’s Food Retail industry. The 16th edition of India Food Forum 2023 took place at The Westin Hotel in Mumbai from November 30th to December 1st.

In this special India Food Forum issue (pages 40-
84), we provide an overview of engaging panel discussions, keynotes from industry experts and market research leaders like Nielsen, some dazzling product launches, and other highlights. Like its past editions, the Forum this year yielded transformative insights poised to elevate food categories to new heights, boost category sales, and effectively tap into emerging trends. This edition of the India Food Forum showcased over 700 food brands, drew more than 3,000 attendees, featured 100+ exhibitors, and hosted 300+ industry experts. Notable highlights included an open-house interaction involving 200+ supermarket retailers from across India engaging with top executives and Modern Trade Heads from prominent food brands such as Patanjali, Dabur, Godrej Consumer Products, Parle, Marico, ITC, Mondelez, HUL, McCain Foods, Kellogg’s, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, P&G, Reckitt Benckiser, and many others.

D2C brands are redefining retail with direct consumer engagement and tech innovation, challenging norms and sparking growth. Yet, scaling presents hurdles, demanding strategic solutions for sustained success. Read the story (pages 24-28) to know how D2C brands can navigate the complexities and challenges of scaling, and thrive in today’s competitive retail landscape.

Our cover story in this issue (pages 30-41) features a newbie brand that replaced the iconic Foodhall at the Bandra West, Mumbai property owned by actor Salman Khan. In 2023, when Foodhall was singing its swan song, it approached the founders of Food Square, then one of its leading vendors, to take over the business. However, the deal fell through over certain legal issues and Foodhall vacated the property.

The departure opened an opportunity for Food Square’s founders Mayank and Lalit to pull a power move and launch their own gourmet store at the marquee site. Now, some six months into operations, Food Square stands like a Faberge gem in Mumbai’s culinary universe.

All FMCG brands aim for market penetration but listing fees in modern trade is a significant barrier for new brands. It forces them to consider the trade-off between securing prime placement in stores and allocating resources for brand building and consumer engagement. Our story Shelf Wars and the Battle for Aisles (pages 22-31) offers great insights from a cross-section of retail experts on the impact and implications of listing fees on FMCG brands and suppliers.

Stepping from modern trade retail formats into the future of small-town retail in India is to traverse very different journeys and business models. One small format retailer that is upending the business and economics of smalltown retailing is SuperK. Launched in 2019, this supermarket chain has swiftly etched its mark on the retail map with a current count of 127 stores across 80 Tier III & IV towns in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Read how SuperK has introduced a fresh paradigm to retail dynamics in India’s tier 3 towns and beyond (pages 82-89).

In the world of retail, one chain is redefining the concept of Health & Wellness. Wellness Forever, a Mumbai-based retailer, has carved out a unique niche and identity of its own. Traditionally, pharmacies are associated with medicines and vitamins but Wellness Forever has expanded its offerings to include a wide range of food and beverage options. With 407 stores across Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh, it has become India’s third-largest pharmacy and health & wellness chain (see pages 24-32).

Currently, non-pharma sales account for about 45% of Wellness Forever’s business, a figure expected to rise to 65-75% within the next 3-5 years. This shift reflects a broader trend in the health and wellness industry, where pharmaceuticals are increasingly integrated with other health-related products and services.

Another significant trend in the food industry is the remarkable growth of the spices category in India. As the world’s largest producer, consumer, and exporter of spices, India’s branded spice segment is experiencing rapid annual growth of 15% and higher, trailing only behind pasta & noodles, and ready meals (read pages 36-45). Within this spicy saga, we bring you the stories of two luminaries: Catch Spices, a trailblazing brand, and Adesh Kumar Aggarwal, the industry’s Masala Man (pages 50-66).

Amajor supermarket chain in southern India is commemorating its silver jubilee this month: 25 years of remarkable success in the food and grocery retail industry. Vijetha Supermarkets’ journey from a modest 1,000 sq.ft. store in Hyderabad to a network of 109 outlets spanning Telangana and Andhra Pradesh speaks volumes about its founder Jagan Mohan Rao’s steadfast dedication to excellence and customer satisfaction.

Our cover story this month (pages 22–32) eloquently portrays Rao’sjourney from humble origins to its current status as a leader in the retail industry. Originating from the agricultural heartland of Andhra Pradesh, Rao nurtured ambitious aspirations. Commencing his career on the shop floor of Trinetra Supermarket, Rao steadily ascended to build his own retail empire. Currently, Vijetha Supermarkets encompasses over 5 lakh square feet of retail space and expects revenues to reach Rs. 850 crore this fiscal year.

What is driving the transition of small provisions store retailers across various regions of India towards more sophisticated modern retail formats? As India’s economy continues to expand and urbanize, consumer preferences are increasingly oriented towards convenience, variety, and quality. Modern trade stores are effectively addressing these preferences and are strategically positioned to capitalize on market opportunities, driven by evolving consumer demands, competitive forces, technological advancements, and shifting business dynamics.

This magazine issue showcases two retailers’ journeys from kirana shops to successful modern supermarket chains in Maharashtra. Jaylaxmi Super Market, originated as a small kirana store in Sindkheda, north Maharashtra, in 1986, and expanded to a 9,000 sq.ft. supermarket in Shirpur by 2020, achieving substantial daily sales of Rs. 8 lakh (see pages 16-22).

Franchising in India’s food and grocery sector, which represents 69% of the retail market, offers lucrative opportunities. Choosing a grocery store franchise is more profitable than starting a new business, offering higher success rates, initial support, and reduced risks. Franchises provide ongoing assistance, a proven business model, and established strengths, enhancing the likelihood of success.

Nowhere else is the success of the franchise model in the grocery sector more evident than in the case of The NEW Shop. The success of its franchise model is particularly evident from its 2019 inception to a nationwide chain of 150 stores. The model distinguishes itself through its remarkable Rs. 15 lakh average monthly revenue per store, and boasting outstanding sales per sq.ft. of Rs. 2,000, surpassing industry standards. Notably, 10% of TNS franchise owners are women, adding a significant dimension to their inclusive success story.

Explore the captivating narrative of The New Shop’s distinctive franchise model on pages 16-23. Discover how the brand is cultivating a cadre of entrepreneurs destined for financial success, with a vision to mentor a minimum of 10,000 franchise entrepreneurs by 2030. Notably, all these entrepreneurs are under the age of 35, many being college students or dynamic young individuals. They recognize that TNS franchise ownership opens the door to earning a substantial lakh or 2 lakh rupees per month. Now, that’s a huge difference, isn’t it?

The future of the food and grocery industry is being shaped by the convergence of technology, consumer behavior, and retail strategy. A prime example of this kind of convergence is udaan, India’s largest e-B2B player, which has harnessed technology to redefine the food and grocery landscape. Read the pages 40-56, which reveal udaan’s meticulous strategy in the FMCG business.

Founded in 2015, udaan ventured into the FMCG sector three years later, aiming to unlock its potential and bridge the gap between manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers for enhanced efficiency and an expanded product range. The company orchestrated a precise interplay of data-driven processes and advanced systems. This begins with efficient availability management, ensuring every product is easily accessible with a simple click.

Currently, udaan’s FMCG business constitutes a robust 30% of its overall operations, recording a remarkable 2x growth in the past year alone. This growth stands as a testament to the transformative power of technological advancements, propelling udaan to the forefront of the industry.

The processed food industry in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10-14% in the years ahead with output expected to reach $535 billion by 2025-26. This presents a big opportunity for plant-protein processors, snack-food processors, and other food processors engaged in the ready to- eat and ready-to-cook segments.

Our story on Griffith Foods (pages 24-30) that is globally known for its food processing innovation, shows how food brands can profitably mine this opportunity by innovating and diversifying their product range to cater to a wide variety of tastes and preferences. The brand set up shop in India in 2006 and is mainly engaged in developing products that deliver positive health outcomes, especially sugar-and-salt reductions.

With consumers showing greater awareness around transparent food labeling and sourcing, and clean ingredients, food retailers too are responding to the consumption shift by proactively promoting healthier food options with a heightened focus on quality, sourcing, importing, selection and merchandising standards.

It’s that time of year again when the festive season comes marching upon us. The period has traditionally enjoyed a very strong and deep connection with the culture of gifting. For retailers and brands, the season is marked by a huge surge in demand for food products that offer a mark of exclusivity and uniqueness when it comes to gifting.

In fact, the gifting theme has now permeated across all food categories. Read our Festive Gifting story (pages 38-43) on how retailers and brands come out with unique and innovative gift packs and gift hampers and valuefor- money products that are beautifully packaged to meet diverse choices for family and corporate gifting.

Our cover story in this issue (pages 24-34) shines the spotlight on north- Maharashtra’s oldest and most emblematic food and grocery retailer. Jalgaon-based Navjeevan chain of stores has been in the business for over 75 years now, starting off as a modest 25 sq.ft. store in 1946. It transitionedto being a modern supermarket in 1993 at a time when the modern trade concept was a novelty even in the bigger cities like Mumbai and Pune. Today, the chain has nine stores under the Navjeevan banner, with 26,000 sq.ft. of retailing area and Rs. 110 crore of annual revenue.

For some years now, many online grocery platforms are trying to supercharge our huge kirana ecosystem. The likes of udaan, Shopkirana, Jiomart, and a few others immediately come to mind. All of them are offering a full suite of solutions that is helping small retailers to tap into a wider consumer base and transform into modern convenience stores.

One such start-up providing complete business-in-the-box solutions to over 2,50,000 kiranas is the Bangalore-based e-B2B grocery platform Jumbotail. Read our cover story (pages 24-33) that weaves a rich tapestry of its grocery retail journey along the seven years of its operations.

In 2015, when the whole world and their uncle were going crazy after B2C online grocery start-ups, two former classmates from Stanford university – Ashish Jhina and Karthik Venkateswaran – made a counter-intuitive move and launched their online B2B marketplace for food & grocery.

India is the largest producer of milk in the world, contributing 23% of global milk production. But far from being a volumetric paradise for milk, India’s dairy industry finds itself behind the eight ball, beset with a welter of challenges such as low milk productivity, poor milk quality, and inefficient supply chain management.

Headquartered in Erode, Tamil Nadu, Milky Mist is one dairy company that is showing the way for the industry to ramp up productivity, efficiency and profitability. Read our story on pages 26–35 to know how the company, founded in 1992 by a class VIII school dropout, has riden to the top league of India’s dairy industry, growing at a 32% CAGR and earnings slated to come in at Rs. 2,200 crore this fiscal. Today, Milky Mist is among the leading dairy brands in India and when it comes to the dairy industry in south India, it sits right atop the higher ridges of Mount Olympus.

As with milk and dairy, India is also the largest producer, consumer, and exporter of spice products. The spices category has been registering strong kinetic growth at 15% year-on-year with value-added, organic and blended spices taking the lead. Our story on pages 42–55 takes a deep dive into the consumption trends and the market movement of the spices category.

Organic retailing is a tough business to crack. While the success and failure rates of all food stores depend on numerous factors including location, competition, management, and market demand, the odds of business mortality are loaded heavily against organic retailers.

The business is characterized by a very slender base of organic-buying consumers, high cost of organic products, and the attendant challenges in managing the organic supply chain. That explains why many retailers who start down the organic road lose their way before reaching the finishing line. While making ends meet is a huge existential challenge for most organic stores, our story on pages 16-26 serves as a Rx on how to run an organic retail enterprise successfully and profitably. Dhanyam Organic Superstores, which runs 9 organic outlets in Chennai, has created its own retailing canon in running the business profitably and scaling it up.

Like organic, dairy too is a complex business to run and manage. While the perishable nature of milk and issues around its quality and integrity create its own set of challenges, there are other confounding aspects of the dairy business. Read our story on pages 48-58 to discover how large parts of India’s dairy industry continue being saddled with legacy burdens and has a myopic view toward new-age digital solutions.

At a time when competitive intensity is heating up in every sphere of business, Grocery Retailers and Food Brands are scrambling to grab the consumer “share of stomach” alongside their mindshare and wallet share.

In the past issue of Progressive Grocer, we highlighted how the beverage category is seeing the entry of many new players as well as the broadening of its consumer base. With a surge in innovation and product drops, national and regional brands are attempting to create a niche market for themselves by targeting different consumer segments and offering unique differentiation. In this issue, we take another approach to the sector through a report that highlights how retailers can double their income from higher sales of beverages. The report drills down to the policy details conducive for the beverage sector and the changes that policymakers can bring about to make India the beverage capital of the world. (see pages 18–22).

Ever wondered why retailers like McDonald’s, Subway, 7-Eleven, The UPS Store, and Dunkin’ have successfully carved out large business empires globally? That’s because these global retail brands have established operational procedures and cracked a business model that can be replicated transnationally.

In this issue of the magazine, we bring you stories of two retailers that are trying to build their brands along the lines of their more illustrious globalpeers, with a business model that can be scaled nationally and internationally.

Think about price pressures, market disruptions, and increased brand fickleness of shoppers and you get the idea why the retail landscape is becoming increasingly challenging by the day. In such a market scenario, the key to success lies in differentiation but taking conventional approaches such as unique pricing or promotions are no longer effective as they can be easily replicated.

Why taking a personalized approach scores over conventional differentiation (pages 44-45), underscores the importance of incorporating personalization in almost every part of the shopper journey and how retail brands can tailor experiences to meet each buyer’s unique preferences.

Alongside personalization, what cannot be overstated is the quality and calibre of personnel at retail stores. Read this insightful account by a seasoned retailer of her personal shopping experience (pages 20-22) at a hypermarket, where she makes some uncanny observations, including why hiring the right people can bring about operational transmutation for retailers while transforming the experience for shoppers.

Our cover story in this issue (pages 26-35) profiles Delhi-NCR based Honey Money Top whose specialization in the perishables category has turned it into a go-to player for other retailers wanting to transform their fruits and vegetables business and looking to generate better revenues from the category.

If the edge in retail business comes from acting on consumer insights, it is through collaboration that brands and retailers can conjure up innovative ways to win new sets of consumers, expand their customer base and capture a bigger slice of the market.

Our cover story in this issue Packing a one-two Punch (Pages 36-53) showcases 10 outstanding success stories of collaboration between FMCG brands and retailers. The stories exemplify how brands and retailers can create a winning playbook by leveraging on each other’s capabilities and resources.

Each of the 10 stories is a masterclass on brand-retailer partnership and how such collaborations can help each other to tap into new revenue streams, drive up sales, reduce costs, raise brand awareness and improve overall profitability.

Another fascinating story on collaboration highlights how farmers, retailers and the state government of Kerala have come together to spawn a widespread movement in organic farming and retailing. While the momentum began picking up in the early 2000s, a host of factors including government support for organic agriculture and a desire for more sustainable and environmentally friendly food options have galvanized many producers and retailers to jump on to the organic bandwagon.

December is the crowning jewel of a month for Progressive Grocer with its publishers hosting India’s emeriti of the Food Retail industry. The 15th edition of India Food Forum 2022 at The Westin Hotel in Mumbai on Dec. 7-8 became the platform du jour for those looking to get a ring-side view of India’s food retail industry and those wanting to ride the action on the emerging innovations and trends and developments impacting the Business of Food in India.

Capturing the current zeitgeist and gazing into the crystal ball to analyze how India’s Food Retail industry will shake up in the future, the Forum brought together leading food retailers and grocers of India along with some of the most illustrious food brands and other stakeholders in the food retail industry.

In this exclusive Food Forum issue of the magazine (pages 22-62), we bring you an overview of some of the riveting panel discussions, which threw up game-changing insights to propel food categories into the next high-growth orbit, turbocharge category sales, and productively mine new and emerging trends in ways that help script memorable success stories for both brands and retailers.

The Food and Beverage Industry everywhere is in the throes of profound changes. Consumers today have evolved tastes and preferences, and this means that they want no trade-offs when it comes to the cost, quality and variety of products they buy.
Likewise, markets too also evolving with the emergence of new distribution channels, which have to be kept adequately supplied by manufacturers and retailers. They also face significant demands for ramping up their capability and adoption of new products which, in turn, leads to shorter production runs and inventory turnarounds, frequent changeovers, and greater focus on asset utilization. Turn to our story F&B Retail: Challenges and Strategies for Building Operational Excellence and Agility (pages 52-56) for an insightful lowdown on the new challenges and opportunities before manufacturers and retailers.
The one approach that retailers and manufacturers can take to overcome these challenges is to create a ‘Learning Organization’ that is agile at delivering the information flow in the network. The key is to focus on activities that equip a producer or retailer to adapt as external forces change. Our Cover Story of the month (pages 26-41) features Daymart – north Kerala’s largest retailer, which aims to become the State’s best and biggest. Kerala probably has the highest density of modern trade outlets with even small and thinly populated villages supporting multiple supermarkets.

The festive season in India heralds a boom time for all retail players. But this festive season, the first to be celebrated away from the long shadow of the pandemic after two years, the game for retailers has changed profoundly from what it was earlier. The past two years saw huge swathes of consumers embrace online shopping and those customers could still prefer staying away from the grind of in-store walk-ins.

However, even online retailers can no longer rest on the security of a large base of existing customers. Those customers could easily move to another outlet offering a better, more trustworthy experience. In a nutshell, both online and offline players need to keep up with customer expectations, competitors’ capabilities, and technological developments to maximize their advantages and profit margins.

In this October issue of the magazine (pages 14-23), we bring you learnings from retail experts on how retailers can up their game this festive season with targeted advertising, promotions, and other innovations to attract and retain customers.

Today, it has become increasingly critical for retailers to ensure an equally strong presence across all customer touchpoints, whether it’s through touchscreen, voice assistant, live streaming, and more. Only then can a retailer hope to make his store relevant to consumers, who are increasingly becoming nomads in their choice of shopping interface and the way they interact with brick-and-mortar stores.

Our story “Maximizing store value through end to-end retail management” (pages 26-27) dwells on why retailers need to redesign their stores in sync with the emerging consumer demands. Stores need to have a footprint across all consumer touchpoints to be in step with the changing consumer habits and to maximize traffic and footfall. The story calls on retailers to dial up their retail management practices in order to make faster decisions on how to reengineer their store operations and amplify footfall quantum in the future.


For all the brouhaha around healthy foods and healthy eating, India clocks one of the highest growth rates for ultraprocessed food and beverages — items high in added sugar, salt and additives. Euromonitor sales data reveal that the retail value of packaged junk food and soft drinks in India jumped 42X in just 13 years — from 2006 to 2019.

Various consumer interest advocacy groups and industry associations have prayed in aid of introducing statutory regulations by the government to address the nation’s concerns on food safety, nutrition and health. Read our story on page 52-54: India’s Food Processing Industry Bets on FOPL… on how adopting a global best-practice Front-of-Pack Labelling (FOPL) on all packaged foods is the need of the hour for protecting the long-term interests of both India’s processed food market and Indian consumers.

In another riveting cover story in this issue, on page 24-33, we train the spotlight on a new-age start-up retailer that seems to have struck gelt by opening modern grocery stores in the retail deserts of India — places like Sukhiapokhri, Islampur, Ramganj, Chopra, Phulbari, Naxalbari and Khoribari in north Bengal, Kishanganj, Thakurganj in Bihar, and other such places.

E-commerce and online shopping are growing at a steroidal pace in India. So much so that many feel the online channel will soon emerge as the preferred shopping medium and will outsprint offline by a wide distance.

But here’s a sobering statistic for those who think that physical retail and grocery retail, in particular, is fast moving towards its sunset date. According to market intelligence tracker IBEF, the FMCG market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.9% to reach $220 billion by 2025, from $110 billion in 2020. But only a thin slice of this market — 􀁼3% — will be taken up by e-commerce, leaving about 97% of the FMCG market in the offline domain. So, any apocalyptic prophecy about the future of offline retail is grossly exaggerated and overblown.

In order to capture the huge offline FMCG market, retailers need to build both their online presence and offline footprint. This strategy is best exemplified by The NEW Shop, our cover story retailer (pages 26-37), which has emerged as India’s fastest-growing 24/7 omnichannel, convenience quick commerce company.

The Covid pandemic led to irreparable disruption and dislocation for many businesses. While the damage and loss it inflicted will take some years to recover and recoup, it also forced industries, including retail, to reinvent, reboot, and reimagine the way of doing things.

For one, it brought about a swift acceleration in the adoption of technology. Grocery retailers, in particular, upgraded themselves to become omni-channel and serve customers remotely. In this issue, we bring you a case study (Pages 33 - 35) on how technology integration and interoperability can help retailers to quickly adapt to the changing needs of the market – from digital payments, connected banking, compliance to government regulations for GST, e-invoicing, e-way bills, among others.

The other notable change as the fallout of the pandemic has been the gold rush witnessed in grocery retailing. Even those with a casual eye could not have failed to notice how there has been a scramble by a lot of digital, e-commerce and quick commerce players who are trying to grab a share of the grocery retail market.

We bring you the story of one newbie retailer — Star Localmart — which debuted in October 2020 but has since gone out to launch 76 new stores in the smaller towns of Maharashtra and 

In a world that has been profoundly shaped by a global pandemic over the past two years, this April is special: Big things are starting to happen again. After an interlude of two years — since the Covid 19 pandemic descended on us like a pall of gloom — India Food Forum, tapping into the zeitgeist of the economy’s mood of optimism, stepped up to the plate to bring back the spirit and bonhomie of ‘revival and renewal’ with a whiff of fresh air and breezy chutzpah at its annual felicitations ceremony, held at The Westin Mumbai, on the evenings of 5-6 April.

Turn to pages (32-48) to read about the most eclectic and finest selection of Food & Grocery and Foodservice Retailers who made the cut for India’s most celebrated industry award and honours: The IMAGES Honours for Food & Grocery and Foodservice Retail Icons of India; The Coca-Cola Golden Spoon Awards for IMAGES Most Admired Food & Grocery Retailers; Pepsi-IMAGES Most Admired Foodservice Retailer Awards across categories and formats; and the Pepsi Swagstar Awards for the most hip and happening foodservice retailers.

It’s the most buzzy segment of grocery retail to have emerged after the post-Covid era, occupying the headspace of both retailers and consumers. Yes, we are talking of Quick Commerce, and the model seems to have brewed up a perfect storm in the grocery industry.

We gathered a slate of leading retail professionals who spoke out their minds (Industry Round Table, pages 44) on the nitties gritties of the model and walked us through the important metrics that matter in this business: average ticket size, unit economics, product mix, blended margins, number of bills, average bill value, key value categories and items and, of course profitability. As we see it, though it’s too early to predict the future of the quick commerce model, the segment has already become a market darling with venture capitalists and investors rushing in with dreams of striking gold.

Our Cover Story on Namdhari’s (pages 36) turns the spotlight on perhaps the only fully integrated seed-to-plate retailer in India. The Bangalore-based Namdhari’s Group forayed into the retail business in 2002 and currently operates a total of 31 stores under its two banners: Namdhari’s Fresh and Simpli Namdhari’s. The striking thing about the retailer is that about 50-60 percent of its sales comes through products of which it controls the complete value chain – from the seed to the plate stage.

At a time when food safety and sustainability has come to acquire the mindshare of consumers everywhere, Namdhari’s retailing strategy and initiatives deserve a big shout out. We hope that their success story will spawn more such emulative initiatives from other retailers as well.

Businesses have a way to suss out opportunities even during a crisis. Nothing best exemplifies this dictum than to see new grocery stores and supermarkets spring up across our urban neighbourhoods and city limits during the past two years of the Covid pandemic.

Industry observers, retailers, distributors in the food and grocery segment have vouched for the fact that the food and grocery sector was fortunate to have caught the tailwinds in an otherwise adverse business weather, prompting many new converts to enter or make a strategic shift to the sector.

Our Cover Story on Jalan’s Retail (pages 22-26), a well-known regional grocery retailer based out of eastern Uttar Pradesh, highlights the painstaking efforts and diligence required to make grocery retailing a successful business. Unfortunately, a lot of new grocers are content stocking mainly FMCG products that are easier to stock but yield lesser margins compared to the food and grocery range of products. For any experienced grocery retailer, the focus should be more on maintaining a quality range of food and grocery products that can offer the best margins in the supermarket business and a competitive edge as a retailer.

January arrives freighted with the promise of new possibilities and new beginnings. In keeping with this spirit and mood, our lead story in this issue takes a deep dive into assessing the market cross-currents and riptides that will wash ashore India’s Food & Grocery industry in 2022.

Enriched with insights gained from a cross-section of leaders across the food and grocery industry, our story Retail CEOs… Read the Tea Leaves for 2022 (pages 28-43) takes the pulse on the industry outlook for this year, what interesting trends and concepts will play out, and how the fortune cookie is likely to crumble in the days ahead. Notwithstanding the Covid-related travails of the past two years that hung like a Damocles’ sword over business, the year ahead could prove to be a tide-turner and game changer in many ways. One interlocutor pointed out that the demand for food products currently is still above the pre-pandemic level while all the leaders put their faith in the growth momentum continuing to build on in the months ahead.

However, cautionary notes were struck as well. More online platforms, newer players, and better technologies are entering the market, and they are changing the rules of business engagement. While there is a clear and perceptible shift in consumer behavior and preference for making purchases online, the spotlight on food safety and hygiene has accentuated with customers making food choices that resonate with the changing realities of our current situation.

We trust that the industry will step up to the plate to embrace the challenges and opportunities through new learnings and innovations, and by aligning their offerings and strategies to the tastes and needs of the modern-day consumers.

It’s always heartening to see retailers come up with new concepts and grocery formats. Their new ideas help push the needle on making retailing more creative, fulfilling and socially responsible. We feature one such enterprising retailer in this issue of the magazine (pages 24-27) who has created a completely “zero waste” and green business at his store near Ernakulum in Kerala.
It is one of those gratifying instances where the store and its owner have put into everyday practice the tenet of “be the change you want to see in the world”. The shop does not promote plastic at all and shoppers are encouraged to buy products in paper bags and glass bottles. By selling all everyday items in ‘loose packaging’ and daily essentials like sugar, pulses, rice and even sweets in paper packages, this retailer and his store has set an inspiring example in promoting green earth and reducing single-use plastic.
Our lead story on “Food Brands for New-Age India” (Pages 30-36) looks at how today’s young consumers are increasingly embracing brands that embody the virtues of being clean, healthy, ethical, sustainable and why itis becoming important for retailers and food brands to further deepen their existing engagement and commitment to these ideals and standards.

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PROGRESSIVE GROCER has been the voice of the food retail industry for over 80 years in the USA. Serving a wide audience in the Indian market, Progressive Grocer India's readers are top management at headquarters and top decision makers at store level. By anticipating, reporting and interpreting important data and trends, PROGRESSIVE GROCER fulfils its mission of identifying and highlighting insights and opportunity for leading grocery retailers, thereby accelerating brands and sales success for leading manufacturers

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3. Without prior written or authorised permission from Magzter, you should not modify, copy, distribute or sell any content obtained from Magzter as everything published here is the proprietary property of Magzter or its licensors. As such unauthorised use may also violate applicable laws including copyright and trademark laws, Magzter strictly prohibits these and will terminate your access and account if any such illegal activity is proved or detected. You should also stand liable for the damages caused by these unauthorised activities. Except as permitted by the Publication's lawful owner, you acknowledge that you do not acquire any ownership rights by downloading Publications accessed through the Service. Except as explicitly required under copyright law or permitted by the features of the Service you may not modify, reverse engineer, publish, transmit, display, participate in the transfer or sale, create derivative works of, or in any way commercially exploit or provide to a third party the content of the App, the Publications, or any portion of them without the express permission of Magzter and the owner of such content. We do not grant you any licenses, express or implied, to the intellectual property of Magzter or Magzter's licensors.

5. You specifically acknowledge that Magzter.com is not liable for any kind of defamatory or offensive or illegal conduct of other users or third parties or their content and that the risk of injury from the foregoing rests entirely with you.

8. Magzter reserves all rights to monitor the content published and inputted by you for the purpose of determining whether you are compliant with these terms and conditions and other operating rules determined by Magzter. Magzter has the right to take decisions about the content and delete them at its own will.

9. Magzter is a distributor and NOT a publisher of the Publications and so Magzter has no editorial control over the content, including opinions, advice, statements, services, offers etc., that is represented in the magazines. So Magzter will not take responsibility for the accuracy or the reliability for any information or facts provided therein or that is made available through the service, by anyone other than authorised Magzter employees who are acting on their official capacities. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered by the Service, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of Magzter. Magzter will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information obtained through the Service or from the Publications. The Service may contain links to other Internet sites and third-party resources and Magzter does not assume any responsibility or liability for communications or materials available at such linked sites. These links are provided for your convenience only. You are solely responsible for understanding any terms and conditions that may apply when you visit or place an order through a third-party site.

Details of the objectionable content, including its link on our platform

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Gift your loved ones with a Magzter Gift Card instantly and give them the freedom to read their favorite magazines and newspapers from thousands of best-selling titles.

Gift your loved ones with a Magzter Gift Card instantly and give them the freedom to read their favorite magazines from thousands of best-selling titles.

Gift your loved ones with a Magzter Gift Card instantly and give them the freedom to read their favorite magazines from {{magCount}} best-selling international titles.

Girish Ramdas is the Co-founder and CEO of Magzter, a New York based startup that has been making waves in the global digital publishing business. Magzter has crossed 80 million users since its inception in 2011 from more than 150+ countries with 1000s of magazines, newspapers and books from more than 4,500 publishers worldwide. He has more than 25 years of experience in cross-platform publishing, including print, mobile, and Web development. During this period, he has co-founded and run three successful start-up businesses. He has enabled magazine companies to go digital and helps them monetize their content across the digital world. Girish's deep industry experience in online, mobile and publishing ecosystems has made him an expert in acquisition, marketing and monetizing digital content across platforms globally.

In the event that you encounter any objectionable content on our platform, we have put in place a grievance redressal policy to address your concerns.

Magzter Inc. (“Company”, “we”, “us” or “our”) knows that you care about how your personal information is used and shared. Please read the following privacy policy (the “Policy”) to learn more about our privacy practices. By visiting any of the websites operated by the Company, and any sub-domains thereof, or using any of our mobile applications and other methods of content distribution (collectively, the “Service”), you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined in this Policy, and you hereby consent that we will collect, use, and share your information in the following ways.

Magzter Inc. is the World's largest and fastest growing self-service, cross-platform digital newsstand with over 80 million users since its inception in 2011 and thousands of magazines and newspapers across 40+ categories and 60+ languages. Headquartered in New York, Magzter has its local presence in Amsterdam, London, Mexico City, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Singapore, and will soon be expanding to other countries. Founded by global entrepreneurs, Girish Ramdas and Vijay Radhakrishnan in June 2011, Magzter enables magazine and newspaper publishers around the world to create and deliver digital editions of their titles to global consumers.

Magzter is committed to providing a safe and secure platform for our users. Please note that Magzter is merely a platform for publishers to distribute their content. We do not control or endorse the content published on our platform. We cannot be held responsible for the actions of our publishers or their content.

Magzter is not responsible for compensating any party that has suffered damages or incurred costs due to any content, or part of the content, that violates their rights. Magzter is not liable to face any legal action in civil court for any violation of rights caused by any content, or part of the content, that infringes the rights of a third party.

Magzter offers the world’s largest {{allyoucanread}} subscription service called {{gold}} which gives digital readers unlimited access to 9,000+ magazines and newspapers for a monthly subscription price. Magzter also has the largest number of stories in the world with its game-changing ezRead 2.0 feature for its apps, which enables smartphone and small-screen mobile users to enjoy magazine content the way it was meant to be enjoyed, with article text that is easy to read and is accompanied by stunning videos and high resolution photography.

Magzter offers the world’s largest “All-You-Can-Read” subscription service called Magzter GOLD which gives digital readers unlimited access to 9,000+ magazines and newspapers for a monthly subscription price. Magzter also has the largest number of stories in the world with its game-changing ezRead 2.0 feature for its apps, which enables smartphone and small-screen mobile users to enjoy magazine content the way it was meant to be enjoyed, with article text that is easy to read and is accompanied by stunning videos and high resolution photography.

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Please fill out this form if you need any help regarding publishing your content on Magzter

Prior to Magzter, he was the President of Dot Com Infoway (DCI) and Galatta Media. His duties included strategic marketing, partnership development, and monetizing content globally. DCI grew from a small team of 3 in 2000 to 300 by 2011 and was dealing with web, software and app development for clients globally.

Since we launched, Magzter has been committed to partnering with global organizations to provide the greatest possible newsstand technology & service to our customers. Whether you are looking to offer magazine subscriptions to your customer database or just want to learn more, Magzter is committed to helping your business grow. To find out more, please fill out the questionnaire below:

The DMCA allows us to restore the removed content if the party filing the original DMCA Notice does not file a court action against you within ten business days of receiving the copy of your Counter Notice.

This Policy covers Company’s treatment of personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”) and other information about you and your computer or device that Company gathers when you are accessing the Service. We may collect Personal Information from you, as explained in more detail below, and we use this Personal Information internally in connection with our Services, including to personalize, provide, and improve our products, services, content, and advertising, and to allow you to set up a user account and profile, to contact you, to fulfill your requests for certain products and services, and to analyze how you use the Services. In certain cases, we may also share some Personal Information with third parties, but only as described in point 4.

This title is included with your Magzter GOLD subscription

To analyze the quality of content and provide appropriate feedback to publishers

We have designated a Grievance Officer to address any complaints related to objectionable content.

We request that any complaint related to objectionable content be sent to the Grievance Officer through email to the above-mentioned email address. We also request that you provide the following details when making a complaint:

and the App that provides you the capability to order, subscribe to and receive the delivery of various magazines, books, news and magazine and publication related content (collectively known as 'Publications') and to have these digital versions of the Publications delivered to you

c. We also collect information associated with your use of the application in order to make personalized recommendations. If you provide your third-party account credentials to us, you understand some content and/or information in those accounts (“Third Party Account Information”) may be transmitted into your account with us if you authorize such transmissions, and that Third Party Account Information transmitted to the Service is covered by this Policy.

f. The Personal Information we collect allows us to respond to your requests, improve our products and services, customize the advertising and content you see, and communicate with you about new products.

is the World's largest and fastest growing self-service, cross-platform digital newsstand with over 87 million users since its inception in 2011 and thousands of magazines and newspapers across 40+ categories and 60+ languages. Headquartered in New York, Magzter has its local presence in Amsterdam, London, Mexico City, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Singapore, and will soon be expanding to other countries. Founded by global entrepreneurs, Girish Ramdas and Vijay Radhakrishnan in June 2011, Magzter enables magazine and newspaper publishers around the world to create and deliver digital editions of their titles to global consumers.

n. We will also use usage information in order to ensure users adhere to our Terms of Use. For example, a user’s usage information will help us confirm that a user only downloads a magazine or other content a permitted number of times or to a permitted number of devices.

which gives digital readers unlimited access to 9,000+ magazines and newspapers for a monthly subscription price. Magzter also has the largest number of stories in the world with its game-changing ezRead 2.0 feature for its apps, which enables smartphone and small-screen mobile users to enjoy magazine content the way it was meant to be enjoyed, with article text that is easy to read and is accompanied by stunning videos and high resolution photography.

{{magzter}} is the World's largest and fastest growing self-service, cross-platform digital newsstand with over 87 million users since its inception in 2011 and thousands of magazines and newspapers across 40+ categories and 60+ languages. Headquartered in New York, Magzter has its local presence in Amsterdam, London, Mexico City, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Singapore, and will soon be expanding to other countries. Founded by global entrepreneurs, Girish Ramdas and Vijay Radhakrishnan in June 2011, Magzter enables magazine and newspaper publishers around the world to create and deliver digital editions of their titles to global consumers.

Progressive Grocer Magazine - December 2023

Progressive Grocer Magazine - December 2023

In this issue

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