India’s smart protein taste test
In collaboration with NECTAR and India Animal Fund (IAF), this is a first-of-its-kind blind sensory analysis of plant-based meat and egg alternatives in India.
Overview
This report evaluates consumer perceptions and sensory performance of 26 plant-based meat and egg products across eight categories. 700 meat-eating consumers in Bengaluru and Mumbai participated in the trial, assessing product liking, sensory attributes, and purchase intent against conventional meat and egg benchmarks.
While 60% of participants ‘liked’ or ‘liked very much’ the plant-based products tested, and 85% expressed conceptual purchase intent, sensory performance varied considerably across products and categories. The findings provide actionable insights for manufacturers and researchers to prioritise improvements in flavour, texture, and nutritional positioning to strengthen consumer adoption and market readiness.
Key findings
- Leading plant-based products are narrowing the sensory gap with conventional meat. On average, leading products were just 0.3 points (on a 7-point scale) behind the animal benchmarks, half the gap of the overall plant-based average. However, every category needs R&D to varying degrees to meet benchmarks. The highest-impact improvements across categories were increasing ‘rich,’ ‘buttery,’ or ‘animal flavours’ while reducing off-notes.
- Plant-based meat appeals conceptually to consumers, as 85% expressed interest in buying products, driven in part by their animal welfare (50%) and environmental (48%) benefits. Conventional meat still leads on ‘tasty’ and ‘protein’ perceptions, which are the largest purchase drivers.
- R&D and taste validation are critical to further improvements. The study’s top-performing product was rated ‘like very much’ 3.7× more often than the bottom-performing product, and 1.5× more often than the plant-based average. Eggs, chicken chunks and mutton keema had the most room for improvement.
Sign up for the webinar
