He indicated that most of the growth in sales would come from milk and milk products. Kurien was speaking at a press conference organised by the Advertising Club Calcutta. He was inducted into the Club's Hall of Fame at the annual awards ceremony.

Speaking on the management of the cooperative he founded and still heads, Kurien said, "Our total salary bill is 0.4 per cent of sales. Multinationals will not be able to compete with us... our managers are as good as theirs. I must add, we have only around 1,000 employees in 45 offices in India."

"At Anand we handle five million litres of milk per day, that means our daily sales are at Rs 5 crore," Kurien said. The total advertising budget of the cooperative is around 1 per cent of sales. The budget for Amulis Rs 25 crore and the budget for Dhara is Rs 5 to Rs 7 crore. "We give our agencies a free hand in advertising without putting someone on our behalf to supervise. But we demand results in terms of sales from the agencies," Kurien added.

Speaking about the increase in milk production, Kurien said, "It is the market that pushes up production. Many people say a lot about the artificial insemination programme and its success as a means of increasing production."

"However, at Anand my experience has shown that the link to big markets had the effect of boosting production. The cooperative survived and grew mainly because we could link up to the Mumbai market very fast," Kurien said.

Speaking about the cooperative movement in the country, he said, "Most cooperatives are not being allowed to grow up to become cooperatives. They are being controlled by the registrar of cooperatives. Imagine the registrar of companies trying to control the corporate world."

Of course the people leading the cooperatives arealso to blame as they are not playing there role well, he pointed out.

Insight

The Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation is test marketing chickies, a preparation of gur and nuts.

V Kurien, chairman of the federation said "I think chicky bars will succeed where chocolate fails in India. We are in the process of designing the machines and setting up facilities for manufacturing the bars."

"I hope we will be able to launch a bar priced at Rs 1. These will be nutritious and good for children," Kurien added.