India’s Pet Economy: Part 1 - From street bowls to store shelves (#531)

Until recently, dogs in India ate what families ate.

A ladle of rice. Lentils. Chapati ends. Perhaps a splash of milk.

Food was shared, not purchased.

It came from the kitchen, not a factory.

But walk through any modern Indian city today - Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad - and you begin to see something new. Brightly colored sacks of kibble stacked beside soap powders and cooking oil. Pet supplements in pharmacies. Grooming products delivered by app within the hour.

Quietly, almost without announcement, pets have entered the formal economy.

And now the largest corporations in India have noticed.

According to industry estimates, India’s pet care market is projected to double from about $3.5 billion to $7 billion within a few years. That kind of growth rarely goes unnoticed by big business.

So, the giants are arriving.

Reliance Consumer Products has launched its own pet food line, priced deliberately 20–50% below existing brands, betting that affordability, not luxury, will unlock millions of first-time buyers.

Mankind Pharma, better known for human medicines, has expanded into dog and cat nutrition.

Tata 1mg, the digital healthcare platform, now offers pet medicines, supplements, food, and grooming through the same logistics system that delivers prescriptions to households across India.

None of these companies began in veterinary medicine.

They began in scale, distribution, and infrastructure.

And that may matter more.

Because the story here isn’t just about kibble.

It’s about access.

For decades, commercial pet food in India was imported and expensive. Something for expatriates or affluent families. For many owners, the choice wasn’t between brands. It was between packaged food and none at all.

If large domestic companies can lower prices and improve availability, then millions of animals may simply eat better.

That is not trivial.

Good nutrition prevents disease long before a veterinarian ever sees the patient.

Yet there is another side to this expansion. One that feels familiar to those of us who have watched similar changes in the United States, the U.K., and Australia.

When multinational or conglomerate players enter a small, relationship-based sector, the language changes.

Care becomes category.

Patients become consumers.

Food becomes market share.

Government incentives meant to modernize food processing - cold chains, manufacturing hubs, export schemes - now indirectly support pet food production as well. Infrastructure grows. Factories grow. Investment grows.

But culture changes too.

What was once personal becomes industrial.

I don’t say that as criticism. Only observation.

Because progress always brings trade-offs.

A stainless-steel bowl filled reliably each morning is better than leftovers scraped from a plate.

Yet something quiet and human is lost when every act of care is mediated by a barcode.

India today stands between those two worlds.

One foot in the kitchen.

One foot in the supermarket aisle.

And the pace is quickening.

If Part 1 is about food, then Part 2 must look further downstream.

Because wherever food and supplements scale, veterinary medicine soon follows.

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