India’s vegan meat alternatives to reach $50 crore mark in 3 years

Call them mock or fake or green or alt or by any other name, but plant-based meat alternatives seem to have taken strong roots in India with reports suggesting that the market will grow to $500 million in the next three years.

At the global level, there has been an accelerating movement towards plant-based meat alternatives with increasing awareness of the ethics of veganism and its benefits to the environment and health. Brands like beyond meat and impossible foods have now made through established fast-food chains around the world. While growth prospects of plant-based options remain strong internationally, India too has seen its own share of flourishing veganism.

Although approximately 70% of India’s population is non-vegetarian, it consumes relatively low quantities of meat thus placing it on the spectrum of “flexitarianism”. Hence their adoption of plant-based meats seems comparatively easy. Moreover, many plant-based products, including meat alternatives seem to be low in cholesterol with upcoming vegan brands making products having protein and other nutrients equivalent to their flesh-based counterparts.

Besides health benefits, Indians are also motivated to take up alt-meats due to their environmental aspects and ethical aspects of animal cruelty. Abhishek Sinha, CEO of GoodDot first pan-India brand of alt-meats, told business standard “It started with a moral dilemma. I used to help animals but also consumed meat”. Gooddot has grown 100% in sales year-on-year tapping on the country’s latent appetite for mock meats.

GoodDot has 11 fast-food outlets called GoodDo which was named after Guddu, a goat Sinha rescued from a slaughterhouse in 2016. Their customer feedback has shown interest beyond metros and into tier II and tier III cities like Patna and Samastipur in Bihar, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, and Maharajganj and Mughalsarai in Uttar Pradesh.

Sandeep Singh, founder, Blue Tribe Foods – another fast-growing successful alt-meat Indian brand – says “Animal farming, as painful as it is, also causes a lot of environmental destruction and I think plant-based meat is the way to live a more sustainable life. I think it is high time we got our act together.”

In late 2021, Ritesh and Genelia Deshmukh brought out their Imagine meats into reality. The growth of veganism in India has even compelled large FMCG giant ITC to take note of where the future is headed. Nirmal Bang, one of the leading stock brokering companies in India, lists 18 new brands thriving in India’s plant-based meat market with a prediction that the current Indian plant-based meat market which is around $30-40 million will touch $500 million in the next three years. 

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