India Gate serves its anti-hunger message on broken plates

KRBL's India Gate brand has launched the latest iteration of its annual 'Grains of Hope' campaign, employing a stark social experiment that served food to influencers on deliberately broken plates to represent India's persistent child hunger crisis.

The campaign, now in its third year, revolves around UNICEF data showing that approximately 38% of Indian children experience hunger or receive inadequate nutrition. At a recent closed-door event, the brand served dinner on plates that were precisely 38% broken, with the missing portion intended to symbolise meals absent from undernourished children's lives.

"We honestly don't look at this as a campaign. We look at this as an initiative or a movement," states Kunal Sharma, head of marketing at KRBL.

The initiative represents the company's attempt to address what it identifies as limited social impact relative to its market position as a category leader.

The experiential activation forms part of a broader integrated campaign launch on Independence Day, incorporating digital content, print advertising, and a school-based programme.

The strategy includes a viral video component where consumer shares translate into meal donations, with India Gate pledging one meal per share to children in need.

However, the campaign's mechanics rely heavily on social media engagement to drive impact, raising questions about the sustainability of such cause-marketing approaches.

The brand has implemented a schools initiative across approximately 50 institutions, creating competitive sharing mechanisms through leaderboard systems that involve both students and parents in content distribution.

The campaign builds upon existing operational commitments, including a partnership with Akshaya Patra that provides 15,000 daily meals to children through a kitchen facility in Ghaziabad.

This two-year programme represents the company's most substantial on-ground intervention, though Sharma acknowledges limitations in the brand's individual capacity to address the broader hunger crisis.

"As a brand, I know we alone cannot do this. We can only get more and more people along the journey to partake in the movement," he explains, highlighting the inherent challenges facing corporate social responsibility initiatives in addressing systemic issues.

The campaign launch coincides with significant shifts in the basmati rice category that present both opportunities and challenges for established players.

Sharma identifies increasing consumer preference for packaged foods, driven by hygiene concerns, as a primary growth driver in northern and eastern markets where basmati consumption is already established.

The brand is simultaneously navigating changing distribution landscapes, with quick commerce platforms emerging as unexpected major channels. Sharma reveals that 75% of India Gate's e-commerce sales now originate from quick commerce, a development that has "challenged" traditional category assumptions about staple food purchasing behaviour.

"When the models of most of the platforms pivoted from, say, a grocery to quick commerce, I would assume none of the staple players would have ever thought that quick commerce could contribute so much," he admits, suggesting the industry is still adapting to digital commerce disruption.

The company attributes this growth partly to basket-building behaviour, where consumers add rice to orders to meet minimum purchasing requirements on delivery platforms.

This pattern has transformed basmati from a planned purchase into what Sharma describes as both an impulse buy and a "basket builder", depending on the consumer circumstances and urban location.

Regional variations in purchasing behaviour are also evident, with different SKU preferences observed between cities such as Gurgaon and Noida, indicating localised market dynamics that require tailored distribution strategies.

In southern markets, traditionally occasional basmati consumers are beginning to incorporate the grain into their regular cooking repertoires, particularly in urban centres. This shift could expand the brand's penetration in regions where rice consumption patterns have historically favour other varieties.

The company is leveraging these category trends to expand beyond rice, recently launching India Gate Uplife edible oils as part of a broader diversification strategy. Sharma reveals plans for additional category extensions, leveraging the master brand's equity to penetrate adjacent food segments.

"You will see KRBL foray into a lot of newer categories more and more frequently," he states, signalling the company's intention to transform from a rice specialist into a broader food brand.

The brand currently employs celebrity endorsements from Amitabh Bachchan to encourage packaged food adoption while expanding retail distribution networks. These efforts target tier-one and tier-two cities where metropolitan penetration rates are already high but growth opportunities remain.

Industry observers note that cause marketing campaigns like 'Grains of Hope' face inherent tensions between generating social impact and driving commercial objectives. Whilst the campaign addresses genuine social issues, its effectiveness ultimately depends on sustained consumer engagement and the company's ability to maintain operational commitments beyond marketing cycles.

The initiative reflects broader industry trends towards purpose-driven marketing, though the long-term impact of such campaigns on both social outcomes and brand performance remains subject to ongoing evaluation by marketing professionals and social impact specialists.