Budget 2019: Govt to Focus on Self- Sufficiency in Food
Budget 2019: Govt to Focus on Self- Sufficiency in Food

Presenting the most awaited and the crucial budget ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal mentioned that the government will focus on self-sufficiency in food and improving agricultural productivity with emphasis on organic food forms.

During his speech Goyal has cited the above agenda as the eighth dimension of the government’s vision.

“We also aim to create a healthy India, with distress-free and comprehensive wellness system for all,” added Goyal.

Also, as health- and hygiene-conscious consumers tend to adopt healthy eating options. Food operators have been forced to add healthy eating options to their food menus. Some restaurants have also started serving health food and organic food as their core offerings. And, this will be good news for all the restaurants serving organic staples and organic food players as the government now intend to focus on organic products and farms.

According to a report by FICCI-PwC, “Overall, the health and wellness food service industry will continue to grow as consumers become more conscious about their diet by trying to eat healthy, going for farm-to-table lunches, growing their own garden herbs, buying as much organic produce as they can afford, trying new millets and consciously avoiding junk as much as possible.”

The government in its interim budget also mentioned that it will focus on building digital India by creating more jobs in the sectors. Hence, we can see that the food-tech sector is going to grow at much faster pace. “We are poised to become a $5 trillion economy in the next five years and aspire to become a $10 trillion economy in the next eight years,” added Goyal in his speech.

Not only this, Indian food-tech industry after a brief turmoil that led to consolidation and exit of a number of start-ups, it is back on a high growth trajectory with the sector’s leading lights, Zomato and Swiggy26, raising huge amounts of capital this year, enabling optimisation of operations and a turnaround in fortunes.

“The consolidation frenzy saw as many as 24 mergers and acquisitions in the food technology space during 2015 and 2016 as against ~12 so far in 2017 and 2018. The sector has also raised ~US$950 million in Private Equity capital from ~60 transactions in the last 28 months.27 The recovery has been led by a reduction in delivery costs and market expansion with order volumes emerging as the primary metric for assessing growth that has increased from ~160,000 in 2016 to ~370,000 in 2017 at 130%,” added the report.

And, with India becoming the second largest hub of startups, we surely can expect more and more brands opening doors for us.

 
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