A milk ATM?

Traditionally, when we started using ATMs, what did they mean? Automatic Teller Machine or what we call, Any Time Money. Life was pretty simple then but now we have ATMs for candies, snacks, soft drinks and Dubai even has a gold bar dispensing ATM.

Well, India might not have the gold ATM but we have got now what could probably the first of its kind – a milk ATM. Yes, Amul has installed the first such ATM at its factory gate in Gujarat and plans to soon have similar ATMs at each of the 1,100 ‘mandalis’ or village-level milk collection centres in Kheda and Anand districts. These ATMs will be installed at different public places to enable the consumers to buy milk whenever needed.

You put in a Rs.10 note and the machine will read this through a sensor and spew out a 300 ml pouch of Amul Taaza milk. The ATM, fitted with refrigeration facility, has a capacity to hold 150 pouches at a time. This is what we call an innovative idea - a product which already exists, except it is being marketed innovatively. That’s what makes Amul the brand that it is today.

Milma, a Kerala brand of milk had already introduced such an ATM way back in 2010 though it was restricted to only the members of that particular residential area who had been provided with an electronic smart card. The member has to swipe the smart card in the ATM for getting the milk. He or she can recharge the Smart Card by using a recharge coupon available with the authorities of the residents association.

But Amul is truly ATM – Anyone can use this ATM.