While tracing the influence of technology in different aspects of our life from 1980’s, it is well known that we have made great strides in most of the areas except few and one of them is our kitchens at home. The appliances what we use in the kitchens has not much transformed over the last 30 years or so. My point here is that the technological improvement what we have witnessed in communication, healthcare etc. is not reflected in the kitchen to the same degree. Why it is so? I found three possible reasons that might have contributed to this stagnation or lower impact:
One, most of the technology innovations what we have been seeing in our daily life is adopted from different cultures and countries. Indian food is very much part of our culture and no one will innovate appliances for us elsewhere. If we don’t innovate, we are not going to change anything in our kitchens in the near future.
Second, except few, most of the Indian appliance companies lack the innovation drive and don’t have a good framework for New Product Development. Their new product launches are more of a cosmetic change to the existing models.
Third, Indian women are less demanding in terms of kitchen appliances.
We had green revolution, then white revolution and what we need now is pink revolution. Governments, appliance industries, FMCG companies and academia should work together to bring a drastic change in the kitchen appliances to help prepare the Indian foods in a most convenient and healthy way.
Why is pink revolution important? Making the food preparation easy and healthy at home will save a huge time and money. The time saved here can be productively deployed elsewhere and it will help to increase the per capita income of household. Transformation of kitchen will give a great fillip to the appliance industry as it will generate a lot of demand for the improved appliances.
For example, people living in cities are consuming the rice made out of pressure cookers, where the entire carbohydrates get into the body which leads to obesity and other associated illnesses. Why don’t we have a pressure cooker that can mimic the way the rice is cooked traditionally. As you know, in traditional rice cooking, rice is boiled along with surplus water, which when drained removes a significant percentage of carbohydrates.
In summary, SMEs have a huge Blue Ocean opportunity in the Kitchen Appliances industry in India. A study indicates that even by the current trend the appliances industry market size will be INR 45,000 Crore by 2022. If this industry innovates, the explosive growth what it brings is left to your imagination.
For more videos on Business Analysis, please Click Here.
