Move over Trump and tariffs. Earlier this week, parliament chewed on something far weightier: samosa size. BJP MP Ravi Kishan said the size of samosas should be standardised, which would make the market for India's most popular snack more transparent. Variations in size constitute a disservice to consumers, who do have access to weight information when buying packaged foods. This information asymmetry results in shrinkflation, where sellers reduce portion sizes without raising prices. Large FMCG companies use this strategy to pass on rising costs to consumers. But they announce changes in labelling.
Kishan's call for quality and quantity standards would bring the far bigger informal food industry onto the same regulatory page as the organised segment. The sheer heterogeneity of production processes in the unorganised restaurant business makes regulation daunting. But that only reinforces the need for rules. Standards for products and processes are necessary conditions for scaling up business. Brands emerge from these building blocks. Despite the size of the market, there's hardly any samosa brand in the country whose reputation extends beyond a few city blocks or some kilometres along a highway. Yet, international food brands achieve near-universal coverage within a few years of launching in India. Capital tends to stay away from what is obviously a sizeable market segment in the food industry, depriving it of the business processes that enable growth through standardisation.
The global food industry is dominated by companies whose products originated as common food - pieces of meat between slices of bread, sugared water, and so on. Going from home kitchens to global value chains has been a journey of product and process innovation. The samosa, despite its West and Central Asian origins, is an ideal candidate for India's offering to the international platter at scale. It matters whether an Indian or a global company manages that transformation. And the journey starts with Kishan's simple but profound suggestion: set some standards.
Kishan's call for quality and quantity standards would bring the far bigger informal food industry onto the same regulatory page as the organised segment. The sheer heterogeneity of production processes in the unorganised restaurant business makes regulation daunting. But that only reinforces the need for rules. Standards for products and processes are necessary conditions for scaling up business. Brands emerge from these building blocks. Despite the size of the market, there's hardly any samosa brand in the country whose reputation extends beyond a few city blocks or some kilometres along a highway. Yet, international food brands achieve near-universal coverage within a few years of launching in India. Capital tends to stay away from what is obviously a sizeable market segment in the food industry, depriving it of the business processes that enable growth through standardisation.
The global food industry is dominated by companies whose products originated as common food - pieces of meat between slices of bread, sugared water, and so on. Going from home kitchens to global value chains has been a journey of product and process innovation. The samosa, despite its West and Central Asian origins, is an ideal candidate for India's offering to the international platter at scale. It matters whether an Indian or a global company manages that transformation. And the journey starts with Kishan's simple but profound suggestion: set some standards.
