To better the private retail players, the federation has even roped in designers from National Institute of Design (NID) to design its parlours, set to come up in various locations, including corporate offices, educational institutes or high-street areas.
"The time has come for us to make direct contact with the consumers and to ensure that we are not exploited or squeezed out in the market by the big retail players like Big Bazaar or Reliance. GCMMF will open 10,000 Amul parlours by 2010," GCMMF chairman and general manager R S Sodhi told PTI.
An Amul parlour is a single retail outlet, which offers the entire range of products from the federations' portfolio like milk, cheese, butter, ice creams, beverages, other milk products and pizzas. Currently, around 1,100 outlets are already operational across India.
GCMMF is now adopting an aggressive strategy to take the number up to 3,000 by the end of this year and eventually reach 10,000 by 2010 to penetrate deeper into the potential markets. The federation has also started the process to choose franchises across the country.
"We started advertising in the media, specially the vernacular press, in April and have received a very good response as these parlours offer a viable and promising business proposition," Sodhi said.
He said even the mom and pop stores, who are under threat because of big stores coming up in huge numbers, have shown interest as "one single Amul parlour can give average return of Rs 10,000 per month".
While, initial investment of one lakh to 1.5 lakh is needed to open a parlour, he added.
Recently GCMMF has announced that its FY'07 revenues have touched Rs 4,277.84 crore (Rs 42.77 billion) - making it a billion-dollar cooperative and is bullish about its performance in future as well.
"We have already joined the one billion dollar club and have set a target of 2.5 billion dollar by 2010," Sodhi said.
© 2025