MegaBrands · Dairy

Amul: Why a Farmer-Owned Cooperative Sets India’s Benchmark in Dairy

Amul, selected as the Mega Brand for Dairy by the Business Intelligence Unit of WCRC, began with one district milk union in Anand in 1946. Today it belongs to about 36 lakh dairy farmers, and the brand’s turnover crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in FY2025-26.

By WCRC Leaders Editorial · Published October 2026 · 9 min read

At a glance

Amul is the dairy brand of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), a farmer-owned cooperative based in Anand, Gujarat. Its roots go back to the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union, set up on 14 December 1946 with Tribhuvandas K. Patel as founder chairman and later shaped by Dr. Verghese Kurien. Led today by Chairman Ashokbhai B. Chaudhary and Managing Director Dr. Jayen Mehta, Amul sells more than 1,200 product variants and reaches over 50 countries. It is the Mega Brand for Dairy in WCRC MegaBrands.

Amul calls itself “The Taste of India”, and few brand lines rest on firmer ground. Behind it sits a simple idea: the brand belongs to the farmers who milk the cows. That idea explains much of what follows: the trust, the reach and the staying power of a brand whose story goes back to 1946.

The story starts in Anand, in Gujarat’s Kaira district. On 14 December 1946, dairy farmers there formed the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union so that the producers themselves would control the sale of their milk. Tribhuvandas K. Patel was its founder chairman. Dr. Verghese Kurien, later known as the Father of the White Revolution, worked alongside him and went on to lead the formation of GCMMF in 1973, when six district cooperatives joined hands to market their products under one name.

In FY2025-26, the Amul brand’s turnover crossed Rs 1 lakh crore.

WCRC MegaBrands covers 501 categories in India and selects one benchmark brand in each. It looks at brands through five pillars: Brand Positioning & Recall; Consumer Trust & Sentiment; Product, Innovation & Delivery; Sustainability, Governance & ESG; and Digital & Financial Soundness. Amul has been selected as the Mega Brand for Dairy by the Business Intelligence Unit of WCRC (World Centre for Research and Consulting). Here is how Amul’s record lines up with each pillar.

Pillar 1: How Amul Owns Share of Mind

Brand Positioning & Recall · weighted 28% in the MegaBrands framework · How MegaBrands measures this

Amul is easy to picture, and much of that comes from one character. The Amul girl first appeared in Mumbai in October 1966, a small girl on a horse beside the line “Thoroughbread, Utterly Butterly Delicious Amul”. Within a few years the campaign found its lasting form: topical ads that comment on the news of the week. The first of these, in 1969, was “Hurry Amul, Hurry Hurry”. Six decades on, the series still runs.

The second source of recall is discipline. Amul has built its portfolio under a single brand rather than a family of separate names. Milk, butter, ice cream and much more all carry the same word on the pack. Every product adds to the same store of memory, and every new launch starts with a name people already know.

The third is clarity. “The Taste of India” works because it describes a single brand sold across the country, in every kind of household and every season.

Dr. Jayen Mehta, now Managing Director of GCMMF, explained in 2022, when he was Chief Operating Officer, how the brand stays current: “To keep pace with the changing times, we do a lot of research, talk to the customers, listen to the conversations, and based on that we have been able to create a wide portfolio of products.”

Pillar 2: Why India Trusts Amul

Consumer Trust & Sentiment · weighted 26% in the MegaBrands framework · How MegaBrands measures this

Trust in Amul rests on a structure, not a slogan. In the Anand Pattern, named after the town where Amul began, farmers own every link in the chain. The National Dairy Development Board describes it plainly: “The institutional infrastructure – village cooperative, dairy and cattle feed plants, state and national marketing – is owned and controlled by farmers.”

That ownership shapes how money moves. Amul says that for every Rs 100 a consumer spends on its products, Rs 80 to 85 goes back to the dairy farmer. Because the surplus returns to members, GCMMF runs on slim margins. Consumers buy from a brand whose owners are also its suppliers, and price changes are passed through to shoppers in both directions. In January 2025, for example, Amul cut the price of its one-litre milk packs by Re 1.

Trust also builds over time. Amul’s cooperative movement has served India for about eight decades, and GCMMF has marketed the brand for more than 50 years. When the brand crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in FY2025-26, Chairman Ashokbhai B. Chaudhary credited “the trust of millions of consumers and the tireless hard work of our 36 lakh dairy farmers.”

Pillar 3: The Engine Behind Every Amul Pack

Product, Innovation & Delivery · weighted 20% in the MegaBrands framework · How MegaBrands measures this

Amul’s promise is kept every morning, at very large scale. In FY2025-26, the cooperative collected about 31 million litres of milk a day from its farmer members. By 2024, its member unions ran about 100 dairy plants with processing capacity of about 50 million litres a day. The brand sells more than 1,200 product variants and moves over 24 billion packs a year.

Getting those packs to shelves is a feat of its own. In 2023-24, Amul worked with more than 15,000 distributors and over 10 lakh retailers across India. Dr. Mehta has said the network sits within about 200 km of every major Indian city.

The model behind this has shaped Indian dairy as a whole. The Anand Pattern links three tiers: the village dairy cooperative society, the district milk union and the state federation. Professionals manage operations and answer to leaders elected by the producers. From 1970, the National Dairy Development Board’s Operation Flood took this model to milksheds across the country and built a national milk grid.

Innovation keeps the range fresh. In 2022, Dr. Mehta said: “We have launched 250 new products in the last five years and 2 products every month.” In FY2025-26, protein-rich, probiotic and organic products helped drive growth, as Amul pushed deeper into towns of 5,000 people and above.

Pillar 4: Amul, a Brand Built to Share

Sustainability, Governance & ESG · weighted 16% in the MegaBrands framework · How MegaBrands measures this

Amul’s governance begins in the village. About 36 lakh dairy farmers belong to 18 member district unions, drawn from about 18,600 villages. Most suppliers are reported to be small or marginal farmers or landless labourers. Each member union is farmer-led, and GCMMF’s Chairman and Vice Chairman are elected from among the union chairmen for terms of two and a half years. In July 2025, Ashokbhai B. Chaudhary and Gordhanbhai P. Dhameliya were elected unopposed.

Women play a central role in the cooperatives. As GCMMF’s then Chairman, Shamalbhai B. Patel, told its 50th annual general meeting in 2024: “Women have been the backbone of these cooperatives, playing an instrumental role in their success.”

The cooperative also puts its scale to work for the land. In a five-year drive that began in 2007, GCMMF’s milk producers planted around 3.1 crore saplings. In 2023, Banas Dairy, a GCMMF member union, joined the National Dairy Development Board and an automotive partner in an agreement for four biogas plants in Banaskantha that turn cattle dung into fuel, backed by about Rs 230 crore; the first opened in December 2025. Speaking about Amul’s dung-to-energy work in 2023, Dr. Mehta said: “Farmers gain additional income from cow dung, the import bill on fuel and fertilisers comes down, and most importantly, consumers benefit from food without chemical fertiliser.”

Pillar 5: Amul’s Growth With Financial Strength

Digital & Financial Soundness · weighted 10% in the MegaBrands framework · How MegaBrands measures this

Amul’s numbers show a brand growing steadily at great scale. GCMMF’s own turnover rose from Rs 59,445 crore in FY2023-24 to Rs 65,911 crore in FY2024-25 and Rs 73,450 crore in FY2025-26, with double-digit growth in each of the last two years. Counting the member unions, the Amul brand moved from about Rs 72,000 crore in FY2022-23 to more than Rs 1 lakh crore in FY2025-26.

The brand’s reach now extends well beyond India. Amul products are sold in more than 50 countries. In March 2024, Amul announced the launch of its fresh milk in the United States, its first fresh milk outside India, working with a local dairy cooperative. “We have been exporting dairy products for many decades. This is the first time we are launching fresh milk outside India,” Dr. Mehta said. In June 2025, Amul fresh milk arrived in Spain, its first market in Europe.

Digital systems tie the network together. Dr. Mehta has described Amul as a highly integrated “cow-to-consumer” company built on a technology platform. Amul runs its own online shop, selling directly to consumers, and e-commerce and quick commerce have become growth channels for Amul ice cream.

The Amul Benchmark

Every category has leaders. A MegaBrand is the brand its category is measured against. Amul holds that place in Indian dairy because its record is strong on every pillar at once. It is widely recognised, built on farmer ownership, able to deliver at national scale, governed by the farmers who own it and financially strong enough to keep investing.

Above all, it shows that a brand can grow very large without leaving its owners behind. As GCMMF’s Vice Chairman Gordhanbhai P. Dhameliya put it when the brand crossed Rs 1 lakh crore: “Our journey to the Rs 1 Lakh Crore milestone is a definitive victory for the cooperative spirit. By scaling our model nationally, we are proving that the ‘Amul Model’ is a timeless blueprint for economic democracy.”

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About Amul

Amul is the brand of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd, a farmer-owned cooperative headquartered in Anand, Gujarat. Owned by about 36 lakh dairy farmers through 18 district unions, it collects about 31 million litres of milk a day and sells more than 1,200 product variants in over 50 countries. The Amul brand’s turnover crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in FY2025-26. Amul has been selected as the Mega Brand for Dairy by the Business Intelligence Unit of WCRC (World Centre for Research and Consulting).