France based dairy giant Danone on September 26, 2012 said that it will be setting up a new business unit in India. Danone said that the new business unit will be set up in Mumbai and will be dedicated for the developing products of the masses and will be rolled in other cities by next year.
The Danone unit is known as the bottom of the pyramid or BOP and manufactures the Fundooz brand of yogurts. The unit was set up last year. Eric Soubeiran, the Danone BOP director while talking to the reporters at the Ficci event said, “The experiment is great and we hope to scale it up nationally by 2013. Right now it is only in the North. It will be in big cities where we are currently operating by early next year”.
Soubeiran added, “The BOP experiment is continuing. We are present in Delhi now. We are developing our long shelf life. The real trigger in this business is how do you manage to get down to the base of the pyramid with a shelf life that is sufficient for you to have the time to reach to the consumers. Two weeks of shelf life is not enough as you cannot go to small villages.” India has become the first country where Danone has launched such a dedicated unit for the bottom of the pyramid.
