Informatics Publishing Limited

Manish Sharma , Shweta Garg

Abstract

• Purpose – The paper provides an overview of the impact of urbanization on the health of Indians and the dynamic market of Functional Foods mapping the competitive landscape and the firm’s marketing effort.
• Design/methodology/approach – The study involves exhaustive desk research to explore, assimilate and analyse data to derive relevant information on market and marketing of Functional Foods in India. A variety of sources including the company sources, government agencies, consulting reports, scholarly papers and expert opinions have been explored.
• Findings – The functional food market in India is growing at a rapid pace as health as a value has percolated in the Indian society undergoing dramatic demographic shifts. The functional food market is innovation driven and dominated by Multinational companies. Ayurveda forms the basis of many Functional Food products sold in the Indian market and has been tapped predominantly by the domestic firms. Edible oil and dairy are two most important functional foods categories.
• Research limitations/implications – The research is based on the data from secondary sources and does not involve primary data collection. The research also suffers from a limitation of not having scholarly papers on Functional Foods market in the Indian context. To overcome this limitation the sources from industry, consulting reports and expert opinions have been referred.
• Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that provides insights on the Functional Foods market in India and may form the basis for further empirical research to gain consumer insights.

 

Keywords

Functional Foods, Marketing, Health, India, Probiotics, Ayurveda

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Shweta Garg ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Commerce, Public College, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab, IN

Abstract

Microfinance is considered the main tool for reducing poverty under the financial inclusion initiative undertaken in most of the developing economies, including India. Microfinance is an important vehicle to channelize the savings of small, marginalized, low-income people in our society. This study is an effort toward learning how microfinance leverages ICT (information and communication technology) and financial institutions (FIs). Further, to study about the usage of ICT and other financial institutions by microfinance in India, 250 MFIs were selected based on a purposive random sample technique. The data was collected by distributing a well-structured questionnaire on which Karl Pearson’s correlation and regression analysis were applied, for which the following dimensions were set—efficiency and effectiveness, financial sustainability, improve productivity, reach, control cost, increase savings, improves market performance, and service delivery. Software like MS-EXCEL (2007) and SPSS were used to draw out results statistically. Along with this, to study the working of financial institutions, tables, graphs, and pie-diagrams were constructed. A little explanation is given to conclude the progress of microfinance in Punjab. The overall result demonstrates that microfinance leverages ICT and other financial institutions in a significant manner, and it is found to be beneficial for the key functioning of the MFIs. However, some constraints are there which need to be emphasized.

Keywords

Microfinance, MFIs, ICT, Financial Institutions, Leverage.

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