COMMENTARY Food as pharma: marketing nutraceuticals to India’s rural poor COMMENTARY Food as pharma: marketing nutraceuticals to India’s rural poor

In 2009, GlaxoSmithKline began test marketing an affordable brand of Horlicks™, its ubiquitous malt-based drink, to be sold in 2.5 rupee sachets in villages across Andhra Pradesh in South India. In marketing the product, which it called Asha™ (hope, in Hindi), GlaxoSmithKline claimed it would provide poor rural consumers with an alternative to local cereal mixes of what they call ‘uncertain quality’, such as finger millet malt. In 2011, PepsiCo India launched a new salty biscuit product called Lehar Iron Chusti™, which it rolled out across Andhra Pradesh in 2 rupee packets, alongside a major education campaign on iron deficiency for women and teenagers. At the same time, in neighbouring Orissa, Coca-Cola was launching Vitingo™, a new sachet-based orange-flavoured drink fortified with 12 vitamins and minerals that it promoted as helping to combat blindness, anemia and other common diseases, in collaboration with a local NGO and self-help group.