Scan food item’s bar code, get recipes on your phone

Chennai: Those packets on the supermarket shelves may soon start conversing if the changing packaging trends in India and across the globe are anything to go by.

Innovations like being able to get more recipes by scanning a simple soup pack or being able to send personalized chocolate gift packs with photos of dear ones printed on them are all underway.

“We are now trying to convert packaging into an active sales medium through usage of technology,” said Sethu Padmanabhan, director of Alia group, a company engaged in premedia services for over a decade.

With over a dozen blue chip clients to its kitty, the group is working on making dynamic packaging of products that communicates with individual consumers.

“For example, we are engaged in developing concepts such as making a simple Rs 5 soup pack generate a dozen recipes on swiping the bar code of the pack on the consumer’s phone screen,” he added.

Pre-media publishing services refers to the processes and procedures that occur between the conception of original artwork and the manufacturing of final output channel, be it in cartons, satchets, tins or bottles.  “Brands are paying more attention to making their packs not just attractive but also communicative, both on the physical shelf and e-shelf,” Mr Padmanabhan said.

In India, 65 per cent of food followed by 35 per cent  of pharma and cosmetics products are packaged.

Indian packaging industry is highly fragmented with more than 22,000 registered packaging companies, of which 85 percent of them are MSMEs. “It is in this context that our services of a prototype lab, colour coding and even ink supplies to local printers gains significance,” he said.