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“Next fiscal, demand will increase at least by 10-12%”
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Monday, 09 December, 2019, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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 Introduced in 1989 by the Haridwar Group, Scoops Ice Cream was initially meant to be exclusively sold to guests at their group of hotels. However, the brand made such a massive impact in its early years that the company decided to take a leap forward and expand its presence. Soon the brand was able to capture a significant market share with the introduction of parlours and franchises. In later years, it received several awards and honours including the Zomato User’s Choice Award and the Great Indian Ice Cream Award.
In an email interview with Kimberley Fernandes, Sudhir Shah, MD, Scoops Ice Cream, delves deeper into the current challenges faced by ice cream manufacturers in the country and his company’s future growth and more. Excerpts:
How will the price of Skimmed Milk Powder (SMP) affect your business if the rate per kg continues to hover around the current price of Rs 350?
Milk and milk products in ice cream are approximately 64% average, which will much impact on costing of product, milk powder price rose from Rs 145 to Rs 350 means 2.4 times impact on milk powder and 1.5 times straight increase on basic production cost.
What do you foresee with regards to sales and production during summer months, if the price of imported SMP goes up to Rs 450 per kg, as is being feared, in the forthcoming year?
At this cost, it will be too hard to run the industry, because in summer not only milk product prices go high but there are so many other things becoming costlier like electricity, labour and transportation.
How will you tide over the situation if the price, production and availability of SMP are not rectified soon?
We want government intervention for assisting industries like us, MSME, in terms, providing tax relief, subsidised power supply so that we can survive in this tough situation.
Will the price of your products increase with the increase in the rate of SMP per kg? Any other factors that are likely to affect the prices?
As it was described in previous question, milk and milk product contribution in ice cream is more than 60% so there is no question of any impact on costing of final product.
Would you consider diving head first into vegan ice cream options that use oats and almond milk power or fruit pulp as a base instead of SMP?
This can be one of the options but it is not a complete solution.
Do you offer frozen dessert options? What do you think about the demand to rename them as ice cream while ice cream made with milk as dairy ice cream?
SMP consumption will be the same whether it may be ice cream or frozen dessert. If frozen desert will be renamed as an ice cream and ice cream will be renamed as dairy ice cream but still categorisation will be there, but there may be little bit increase in demand.
What kind of sales are you looking at in the next fiscal? Any expansion plans?
Demand is increasing day by day and in the next fiscal year, demand will increase at least by 10-12%.
What do you think about the competition from foreign and natural brands?
There is lot of competition from natural and foreign brands but people are very much touched with Indian brand and natural is limited to few flavours where there is their monopoly but we have at least 10 times more options than natural in terms of flavour.
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