The ‘Swiggy Seal’ initiative that the online food ordering and delivery company has recently introduced is an example where Indian companies are understanding the value consumers are increasingly placing on quality – and the latter’s willingness to pay for it (thereby the quantitative element of quality). Swiggy Seal is a desi, online food delivery version of a Michelin star, if you will. A restaurant on Swiggy’s list with the seal displayed means that Swiggy can vouch for that establishment’s food safety measures and hygiene standards, handling and packaging included. This may seem an innocuous addition. But that extra qualitative ‘bharosa’ engages consumer preference, as well as pushes more restaurants to do the needful to earn their qualitative ‘stripes’ beyond the taste of their food.
India’s famous (notorious?) price-sensitivity isn’t fading away. But what’s becoming increasingly visible across sectors, especially in F&B, is the seeking out of ‘standards’ and flaunting them for prospective customers. W Edwards Deming, ‘father of the quality movement’, is famously credited with making post-WW2 Japan a dominant global industrial economy via his management mantra of putting qualitative excellence at the centre of manufacturing and services. His 1939 masterpiece, ‘Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control’, and 1950-60 lectures in Japan underline his push to systemise better design of products to improve service, higher level of uniform product quality, and improvement of product testing. Breaking into a quality-sensitive market in India means creating one. There is first-mover advantage to be availed here.
