In India, milk has traditionally occupied a sociocultural place of pride, whether it is mothers insisting children to finish a glass of milk, families preparing dairy-based dishes at festivals, or the vast chain of countrywide sweet shops giving it a unique place in the Indian food economy. It has been both a nutritional staple and one of the country’s most successful agricultural value chains.
Yet, between 60 and 74% of Indians are lactose mal-absorbers, according to a 2015 study by the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI). This biological reality, long treated as an individual problem rather than as a public health hazard, even less as a market gap, is now providing a fresh impetus to the country’s dairy industry to reimagine milk.
