In India, where crops suffered major damage last year after unseasonal rains, anxiety over food prices is high. Cooking staples like onions and tomatoes have gone through the roof, increasing three- to fourfold in the first two weeks of January. The problem is that these two ingredients are the minimum required for a good “tadka” (generally a paste of chopped onions, tomatoes, coriander, green chilies and spices), one of the most important steps to making an Indian dish.
The alternative is ready-to-use pastes that come in sealed packs from brands like Kissan Tomato Puree, Dabur Hommade and Smith & Jones. However, even after years on the market and high-decibel campaigns focused on assurances of quality and freshness, these products haven’t been successful with the masses, even in busy metropolitan areas. A majority of Indian women continue to trust that a tadka’s freshness directly influences the quality of the dish and thus prefer the rigor of chopping onions and tomatoes before cooking a meal.
Now, the choice becomes more difficult: Ready-to-use products are cheaper, since their prices have remained more or less stable. So Indians are compromising, and according to the latest data, brands like Smith & Jones have reported a whopping 300 percent increase in sales. Price anxiety has led consumers to break one of the most sacred rules of Indian cooking: “Thou shalt always use fresh onions and tomatoes to prepare a tadka!”
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While several brands leverage consumer anxiety regarding obesity, diabetes, heart health and physical fitness, Times of India (TOI), the country’s leading English daily, is tackling mental and spiritual health. Engaging the urban, educated Indian, it taps into the two things that constantly nag us: the purpose of our existence and why life turns out the way it does.
