What's cooking at food retailing in India

India Food Forum 2020, India's largest food retail intelligence event, focused on massive emerging opportunities in cloud kitchens, food delivery systems and start-ups in the food space. Some interesting trends were addressed by prominent speakers of top firms like Technopak Nielsen, Deloitte, PwC at the Forum which was held at Hotel Renaissance, Mumbai.

Commenting on the Indian Food Service Market, Saloni Nangia, President, Technopak, highlighted some of the trends observed like the organized sector will rapidly outpace the unorganized in this space. Even in the organized sector, casual dining is leading the way. Among the top eight cities: 42% are from Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, etc.

The top five trends observed were food services and food retailing that are exploring convergence, the emergence of captive dining spaces and delivery platforms to compete in mass-to-mid play. Urban consumers are becoming more homogenous and locations are moving beyond malls and plazas.

In his address, Kunal Gupta, Director- Lead, Digital Retail (E-commerce) Nielsen India, threw some surprises. According to him, dinner orders are 1.6x times more than lunch orders during the weekdays. During the weekends' dinner orders shows a steep decline. He attributed this to the fact that people tend to go out for dinner more during the weekends.

Eight metros are driving volumes in the online food ordering space, with South India being a clear leader with 40% market share. 77% of these are males with 60% being in the 18-29 year-old category. Monday and Saturday show more preference for vegetarian food.

Another trend that came across clearly was that southern cities mostly prefer north Indian cuisine. North Indian food is also the top preference in cities like Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata.

Avinash Chandani, Director, Strategy & Operations at Deloitte suggested that technology will be a disruptor of the ecosystem of food value chain. Some of the major trends that are shaping the industry are convenience to eat-out and take-away option, preference for healthy ingredients, glocalization of taste, ease of online ordering and the role of social media.

Also, hyperlocal delivery, though at a nascent stage in India, offers significant growth potential.