The Real Economics of Zero-Commission E-commerce
October 21, 2026
Food safety is undergoing a fundamental repositioning within India’s food and beverage sector.
What was once managed largely through periodic quality checks and routine compliance reviews has become a strategic issue involving leadership teams, operating functions, suppliers, digital platforms and distribution partners.
The shift is being accelerated by stronger regulatory enforcement, digitally empowered consumers and the speed at which food-safety complaints can affect public trust.
In “Putting Food Safety on Your Plate,” written by Meenakshi Verma Ambwani for The Hindu BusinessLine, Ankur Bisen, Senior Partner at The Knowledge Company (TKC), identifies the organizational change already underway:
“The enforcement actions have created higher awareness in the packaged food and beverage value chains. Companies are no longer taking a perfunctory approach to brand risks arising from food safety issues.”
He adds:
“From sales teams to operations teams to boardrooms, the conversations regarding food safety and compliances have taken centre stage. But a lot more needs to be done to bring a larger shift towards improved benchmarks for food quality and safety, as there are many moving pieces.”
The larger strategic implication is clear: food safety can no longer be delegated to one compliance or quality-control function.
Stronger Enforcement Is Raising the Cost of Weak Controls
The scale of recent enforcement activity illustrates the growing regulatory pressure facing India’s food ecosystem.
According to The Hindu BusinessLine, food-safety agencies conducted approximately 705,000 inspections and 13,203 raids between April 1 and August 31, 2026. Authorities issued 8,151 notices, suspended 677 food licenses and 105 registrations, and seized more than 3.5 million kilograms and 86,000 liters of food products with a reported value of ₹42.01 crore.
The immediate consequences of noncompliance can include product seizures, license suspension, mandatory label changes, operational disruption and litigation.
The longer-term consequences may be more damaging.
A food-safety failure can affect retailer and platform relationships, investor confidence, expansion plans and the brand’s credibility with consumers. Underinvestment in preventive systems may therefore create costs far greater than the resources required to design and maintain stronger controls.
This changes the financial logic of food safety.
Compliance can no longer be viewed solely as an expense necessary to satisfy regulators. It must be evaluated as a risk-adjusted investment in operational continuity and brand protection.
Food Safety Is Now a Brand and Enterprise Risk
Consumers cannot independently observe most of what happens across sourcing, manufacturing, storage, transportation and preparation.
They rely on businesses to ensure that ingredients, production processes, packaging, labeling, storage conditions and distribution systems meet the required standards.
A failure at any point can damage the entire brand promise.
This risk has become more visible in a digitally connected environment. Consumer complaints can move rapidly from an individual transaction to social media, digital platforms, regulators and mainstream news.
Food-safety performance can therefore influence:
Food safety should consequently form part of enterprise risk management rather than operate as a technical activity disconnected from commercial strategy.
The Entire Food Value Chain Is Accountable
Food-safety complexity increases as a business grows.
A company may add new suppliers, contract manufacturers, warehouses, franchises, distributors, dark stores, restaurants and digital platforms. Each participant creates another point at which standards must be communicated, monitored and enforced.
Weaknesses can emerge through inconsistent supplier quality, poor ingredient traceability, interrupted cold chains, inaccurate labeling, inadequate employee training or ineffective complaint escalation.
Quality teams may lead technical standards, but they do not control every decision influencing the final outcome.
Procurement determines who supplies the ingredients. Operations determine how products are manufactured and stored. Sales and distribution influence where stock is placed and how quickly it moves. Marketing shapes the claims made to consumers. Legal teams define the obligations of third parties. Leadership determines whether the organization has sufficient resources and accountability.
Food safety is therefore a shared operating responsibility.
However, shared responsibility must not result in fragmented accountability. The business still requires a clearly identified executive owner with the authority to intervene and escalate material risks.
D2C Food Brands Face a Distinct Scale Risk
India’s growing D2C food ecosystem faces a particular governance challenge.
Emerging brands can build demand quickly through digital channels, but their quality systems may not mature at the same pace. Funding and consumer traction can encourage rapid additions to the product portfolio, manufacturing base, vendor network and distribution footprint.
This creates the risk of commercial growth outpacing operating readiness.
Before scaling, D2C food businesses should establish whether suppliers can support higher volumes consistently, product specifications are documented, batches can be traced and third-party facilities are audited regularly.
Leadership also needs a consolidated view of quality risks across vendors, warehouses and channels. Without that visibility, individual incidents may be managed separately even when they indicate a recurring weakness within the operating model.
Growth should therefore be measured not only through revenue, distribution and product launches, but also through the organization’s ability to maintain quality and safety as complexity increases.
Supplier Governance Must Continue Beyond Onboarding
Supplier approval is only the beginning of food-safety governance.
Quality can change when production volumes rise, raw-material sources shift, supplier ownership changes or subcontractors are introduced. A supplier that initially meets the required standards may present a different risk profile several years later.
A risk-based supplier program should define product specifications, acceptance criteria, testing requirements, audit frequency, traceability standards and corrective-action deadlines.
High-risk ingredients and production processes require deeper controls than comparatively low-risk categories. Applying the same audit and testing frequency to every supplier may waste resources while leaving the most material exposures insufficiently monitored.
The strongest supplier-governance systems combine regular performance data with physical verification. They also require suppliers to notify the business before changing ingredients, production locations, subcontractors or critical processes.
Repeated violations should have defined consequences, including re-audit, suspension and exit.
Food Safety Must Move from Reactive to Preventive
A reactive compliance model responds after a consumer complaint, failed inspection or regulatory notice.
A preventive model identifies emerging risks before they become incidents.
That requires regular audits, product testing, employee training, supplier monitoring, batch traceability and structured corrective-action tracking. It also requires the organization to study weak signals rather than waiting for a crisis.
The objective should not be to prepare temporarily for an inspection.
It should be to operate consistently enough that inspection readiness becomes part of ordinary business practice.
This distinction matters because an audit provides only a snapshot. Food-safety performance depends on what happens every day between formal reviews.
Consumer Complaints Should Become an Early-Warning System
Consumer complaints often remain within customer-service systems, separated from quality, regulatory and operating teams.
That limits their strategic value.
Complaints should be classified by product, batch, supplier, location, channel and severity. Repeated references to spoilage, damaged seals, taste changes, labeling errors, foreign matter or illness may identify an emerging pattern before formal inspection or laboratory testing does.
The business should define which complaints require immediate quality review, when a batch should be held and when leadership or regulators must be notified.
Patterns should also be analyzed across channels. Several apparently isolated complaints received by different retailers or platforms may relate to the same product, supplier or batch.
The objective is to move from resolving individual service cases toward detecting system-level risk.
Digital Platforms Are Becoming Part of the Governance System
Food-delivery and digital-commerce platforms are no longer neutral intermediaries in the food ecosystem.
Consumers increasingly expect them to respond when a listed restaurant, seller or product raises questions around quality and safety.
Platforms can influence standards through seller onboarding, product-information requirements, complaint monitoring, listing suspension, supplier declarations and corrective-action processes.
As platforms become more deeply embedded in food discovery, ordering and delivery, their governance responsibilities will continue to expand.
This also creates an additional requirement for brands and food businesses. Compliance standards must remain consistent across direct channels, marketplaces, quick-commerce platforms and physical retail partners.
A business cannot operate with one food-safety standard for its own stores and a weaker standard for third-party digital channels.
Incident Response Must Be Designed Before a Crisis
When a food-safety incident becomes public, businesses face simultaneous pressure from consumers, regulators, employees, retailers, platforms and the media.
Decisions made during the first few hours can affect both public-safety outcomes and long-term brand trust.
A prepared organization should already have a cross-functional incident-response team, defined escalation thresholds and rapid access to product, batch, supplier and distribution records.
The business should also have established procedures for:
Communication must be accurate, timely and proportionate.
Speed matters, but unsupported reassurance can create additional reputational and legal risk if the underlying facts later change.
Food-Safety Governance Requires Clear Decision Rights
Cross-functional accountability becomes ineffective when everyone is involved but no one has the authority to act.
A mature governance model defines which decisions belong at the outlet, facility, business-unit and corporate levels.
The organization should establish who can stop production, block an incoming ingredient, suspend a supplier, close an outlet or initiate a product recall.
It should also specify who communicates with consumers, regulators, platforms and the media, and which issues must be escalated to executive leadership or the board.
Clear decision rights improve response speed. They also protect employees from commercial pressure to continue production or sales when product safety remains uncertain.
Food-Safety Measurement Must Reach the Boardroom
Boards do not need to manage individual inspections.
They do need a clear view of the organization’s exposure, preparedness and ability to respond.
Food-safety reporting should cover more than the number of audits completed. Leadership teams need visibility into recurring violations, supplier noncompliance, product-test failures, complaint patterns, corrective-action delays, labeling risks, license status and regulatory notices.
A useful boardroom discussion should address questions such as:
These questions move the conversation from activity reporting toward enterprise preparedness and accountability.
A Food-Safety Maturity Model for 2026
Organizations can evaluate their food-safety capabilities through four stages.
Stage 1: Reactive Compliance
Action is driven mainly by inspections, regulatory notices or consumer incidents. Responsibility remains concentrated within quality or regulatory teams.
Stage 2: Documented Control
Policies, audits and training programs exist, but implementation varies across suppliers, locations or commercial partners.
Stage 3: Integrated Risk Management
Food safety is connected with sourcing, operations, expansion decisions, complaint systems and executive reporting. Corrective actions are monitored centrally.
Stage 4: Preventive and Predictive Capability
The business combines testing, supplier performance, traceability, complaints and operational indicators to identify emerging risk before a failure occurs.
The objective is not to reach the highest stage on paper.
It is to build controls appropriate to the organization’s product risk, network complexity and pace of growth.
#TKCPerspective: Five Priorities for a Stronger Food-Safety Operating Model
Extend accountability across sourcing, operations, commercial teams, legal, technology and leadership.
Ensure supplier governance, traceability, testing and incident-response capabilities grow ahead of business complexity.
Analyze recurring patterns rather than treating complaints only as isolated customer-service cases.
Bring contract manufacturers, franchisees, warehouses, dark stores, distributors and digital partners into one governance framework.
Track whether incidents decline, recurring gaps close and quality benchmarks improve over time.
Stronger Enforcement Can Support Organized Brands
Stronger enforcement is not only a cost or risk for businesses already investing in compliance.
It can also create a more level competitive environment.
Companies maintaining quality, traceability and accurate labels may benefit when regulators act against counterfeit, mislabeled or unsafe products. Consistent enforcement can reduce the advantage enjoyed by operators competing through noncompliance.
This can strengthen consumer confidence in organized brands and improve category credibility.
Compliance can therefore evolve from being perceived solely as a cost toward becoming a source of commercial differentiation and trust.
From Compliance Activity to Enterprise Capability
India’s intensified food-safety enforcement has created urgency.
But enforcement alone cannot produce consistently stronger standards.
Sustainable progress depends on whether businesses embed food safety into everyday decisions across sourcing, operations, sales, distribution and leadership.
The strongest companies will not treat food safety as an external obligation activated by an inspection. They will treat it as part of the product promise, the operating model and the basis on which consumer trust is earned.
How TKC Supports Food and Consumer Businesses
The Knowledge Company works with food, beverage, foodservice and consumer businesses to build growth models supported by strong governance and operating discipline.
Operating-Model Design
Clarifying responsibilities, decision rights, governance and escalation across complex value chains.
Supply-Chain and Vendor Strategy
Strengthening sourcing, supplier systems, quality controls and traceability.
Business Transformation
Aligning leadership, processes, capabilities and performance measures with changing regulatory and market requirements.
Network and Expansion Strategy
Ensuring food-safety capabilities scale alongside new products, formats, locations, channels and partnerships.
Consumer and Market Insights
Understanding changing expectations around safety, quality, transparency and trust.
Is your food-safety framework keeping pace with the scale and complexity of your business?
Connect with TKC’s Retail, Consumer Goods & Food Advisory team at vidya@tkc.in.
Read the complete original article:
Putting Food Safety on Your Plate
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