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The label has become the product
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Saturday, 02 May, 2026, 15 : 00 PM [IST]
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Ashwin Bhadri
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India is the world's third largest packaging market. So why is what's printed on the box more consequential, and more contested, than ever before?
Walk down any supermarket aisle in Mumbai or Bengaluru, and something has quietly shifted. The box, the pouch, the foil sachet, they are no longer just containers. They are the first, and often only, conversation a brand gets to have with its consumer. In India's $101 billion packaging industry, flexible formats now lead with over 54% of market share, and every centimetre of that surface is a battleground.
That shift didn't happen overnight. As of September 2024, India became the world's third largest packaging market, surpassing Japan. The industry is set to expand from $84 billion in 2024 to $143 billion by 2029, at an 11% CAGR that outpaces global averages. Behind those numbers is a simpler truth: more products, more shelves, more labels fighting for attention. But attention, it turns out, is not the same as trust.
In today's food economy, the label doubles as advertising. Bold claims, "low fat," "cholesterol free," "natural", dominate the front, even as the fine print tells a different story. A study of 105 packaged food products on Indian e-commerce platforms found that 28.6% of nutrient claims were inaccurate, with certain claims such as "Rich in calcium" showing 100% inaccuracy rates across tested products. A separate examination of 230 packaged food products found that over 80% of on-pack claims were unverifiable, obscured by vague regulatory definitions or the absence of quantitative disclosure, with several products carrying misleading claims despite being high in sugar, salt, or saturated fat.
The Indian Council of Medical Research has also warned that health claims on packaged food are specifically designed to convince the consumer that the product is healthy, and that even with FSSAI's strict norms, the information on labels can be misleading. Sugar-free foods may be loaded with fat. Fruit juices may contain as little as 10% actual fruit pulp. The gap between what's printed and what's real has quietly become a public health problem, not merely a compliance one.
The regulatory intent, however, lands on uneven ground. Although 90% of urban consumers read food labels, the majority, 81%, look only for the manufacturing or expiry date. Of those who read labels, only a third checked nutrition information or ingredients. Brand recognition and shelf familiarity continue to override scrutiny.
And yet, the consumer is changing. Younger cohorts are becoming increasingly deliberate in their food choices, Gen Z is increasing protein intake at more than twice the global average, while millennials are more willing to pay a premium for perceived health benefits. These consumers are reading labels, searching ingredient lists, and questioning claims. The problem is that the claims they encounter are frequently not what they appear to be.
A survey found that even among India's Gen Z, often considered the most health-aware cohort, 44% consume junk food often or regularly, despite high interest in weight loss, immunity and skin health. The aspiration is there. The information on the label is failing them.
This is why the more than 70% of purchase decisions made at the point-of-sale matter so much. When the label, is the last thing a consumer sees before buying, and the label cannot be trusted, the entire chain of informed choice breaks down.
Regulators have noticed. In July 2024, the FSSAI approved a mandate requiring the display of total sugar, salt, and saturated fat in bold and larger font sizes on packaged food labels, a seismic shift for an industry where design and compliance had long operated in entirely separate silos. Every change to labelling rules now takes effect from July 1 each year, creating a fixed compliance calendar that signals the standards will only tighten further.
The regulatory net is widening beyond physical shelves, too. The FSSAI's Labelling and Display Regulations 2020 now explicitly govern e-commerce food business operators, requiring mandatory label information to be provided to consumers digitally before the point of sale. By 2024, over 200 companies had been fined or issued notices for failing to meet new packaging standards regarding nutritional content, ingredient lists, and safety certifications. Compliance is no longer optional, it is enforced.
Against this backdrop, the fake and counterfeit FMCG-packaged food market is growing at 15% annually, a rate that outpaces the broader FMCG sector's own growth. The most targeted products are not luxury goods. They are daily staples: water, salt, flour, ghee, toothpaste, soap. In 2025, the ASPA counterfeit news repository recorded 187 instances of counterfeiting in the FMCG industry, with total reported cases between 2018 and 2025 reaching 1,022 a roughly 2.5-fold increase in eight years.
FSSAI officials have noted that in many enforcement raids, unlicensed manufacturers and mislabelled products were consistently found together, two violations sharing one package. A label that cannot be independently verified offers no protection; it only offers the appearance of one.
This is the point at which the label stops being a branding conversation and starts being an accountability question.
A label is a legal document that happens to live on a package. When brands treat it as a design asset instead of a compliance commitment, consumers pay the price. The fix isn't complicated, independent testing before print, not after a recall.
That accountability must now live in a laboratory, not a design brief. Nutritional values, allergen declarations, shelf-life claims, each must be tested, documented, and defensible before a product ever reaches a shelf. AI-driven label audits have already flagged a 52.5% non-compliance rate in nutrient and health claims, a figure that reveals how far industry self-reporting has drifted from verified reality.
Digital printing adoption has already reached 18% penetration in label lines in India, supporting agile production, late-stage customisation, and counterfeit deterrence. QR codes, batch traceability, and third-party lab verification are moving from best practice to baseline expectation, not because brands want them, but because regulators demand them and consumers are increasingly beginning to ask.
India's packaging boom has created a new imperative. The wrapper carries the product. The label carries the promise. And in 2025, that promise is only worth as much as the science behind it.
(The author is CEO & founder at Equinox Labs)
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