Amul : The taste that has been ruling India

Milk, butter, cheese, ice cream, chocolates, beverages and sweets. With all these products, Amul has been a prominent name in India since decades. It is also one of the few indigenous brands that is ruling the global market. We are certainly familiar with these facts. But, not all know what actually led to the birth of Amul. So, lets focus on the beautiful journey of Amul today.

HISTORY

The formation of Amul is a part of the cooperative movement against the exploitations of middlemen from Polson Dairy of Anand district who bought milk from the farmers of Kaira District at very low rates and sold it to the then Bombay Government. This trade did not benefit the farmers in any way and so they made a plea to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel under the leadership of Tribhuvandas K. Patel. He advised them to form a cooperative and supply milk directly to Bombay. In 1946, the farmers of that area went on a strike which led to the foundation of the cooperative (Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union) for collection and processing of milk. Cooperatives were aslo formed in different villages of the district in order to decentralize the production of milk. KDCMPUL then started supplying to Bombay within June, 1948.

In 1949, Dr. Verghese Kurien joined the union as an employee. He was actually the true architect of Amul. The dairy industry got a new direction after his arrival. In October 1955, H.M. Dalaya's innovation of making milk products from Buffalo milk got commercialised with Kurien's help. This led to the establishment of the first modern day dairy at Anand and since then the Amul word was used in the products developed by the Kaira Union. The word Amul is derived from the Sanskrit word Amulya which means 'priceless'. It also stands for Anand Milk Union Limited.

In 1970s, Amul became the driving force behind the White Revolution in India. Dr. Kurien had a vision, he wanted to offer the small scale dairy farmers quality control units and a proper centralised marketing. So, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) was established in 1973 to control and market the milk produced in different cooperative unions in Gujarat.

Dr. Kurien is called the milkman of India for his selfless contributions in revolutionising the dairy industry.

ADVERTISEMENT

We often see the Butter Girl in advertisement hoardings of Amul Butter narrating different events through interesting animations. She is also present in the packets of Amul Butter along with a famous slogan "Utterly Butterly Delicious".

The Butter Girl came into existence in 1966 when Sylvester daCunha became the Managing Director of the advertising agency that handled Amul butter's advertisements. Dr. Kurien gave him complete creative freedom and he had the power to release the advertisements without even the company's permission. This brought a new era of corporate advertisement in India.

The Butter Girl has been used to narrate almost all the small and big events in hoardings since 1966. It has been one of the longest running ad series and holds a Guinness World Record for that.

The Butter Girl in a box of Amul Butter
(Pic Courtesy : Unbedeutend)

PRODUCTION AND TRADE

Amul has helped India to become the largest milk producer in the world. It is now an 18 member union with more than 3.6 million dairy farmers collecting, on average, 23 million litres of milk per day across 18000 villages in Gujarat. It exports a number of products such as UHT Milk, butter, ghee, fresh cream and others to different countries in the world. In 2019-20, Amul reported a turnover of Rs. 38,550 crore.