In today’s Finshots, we take you on a tour of India’s egg industry and explain how the eggs many of us consume are priced.

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Now, on to today’s story.

The Story

Namakkal, a district in Tamil Nadu, is widely recognised as the Egg Capital of India. It produces about 6 crore eggs every day, and over 10% of these are exported. And prices of eggs in the Egg Capital have hit the ₹6 mark for the very first time. For context, each egg now costs ₹6.05 at Namakkal’s poultry farms versus last year’s highest rate of ₹5.95.

This means that buying eggs next time might cost you a little extra. So we thought, why not dive into how eggs are priced in India and why egg prices have hit record highs right now?

And before you think, “Why should I know all this?”, remember, the egg industry is central to India’s economy and export story. The country ranks second globally in total egg production, producing over 14,200 crore eggs annually. And Namakkal accounts for a large share of India’s egg exports, close to 80–90% depending on the year. Which is why this story matters.

At the centre of this entire pricing puzzle is the National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC), a non-government, farmer-driven cooperative-style body that plays a huge role in price discovery. And if NECC doesn’t ring a bell, maybe the ad jingle from the 1990s will: “Sunday ho ya Monday, roz khao ande”, which translates to “whether it’s Sunday or Monday, eat eggs every day.” This jingle was pushed out by the advertising agency working with NECC, all in the hope that Indians would warm up to eggs and eat them more often.

And there’s a fun little backstory behind why NECC even felt the need to popularise eggs in the first place.

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, egg prices in India had fallen below production costs. At the time, traders, not farmers, determined prices. They often ignored production costs or demand-supply realities and would buy eggs at artificially low rates. They’d then dump them into cold storage, and release them during peak seasons. And when farmers would try to raise prices during high-demand months, traders would simply refuse to buy from them because they already had stockpiles.

With no price-stabilising mechanism, farmers were stuck in a vicious cycle. For context, between 1979 and 1981, the cost of inputs, especially feed, shot up by over 250%, but the price of eggs barely moved. Thousands of poultry farmers went bankrupt and many had to shut shop.

Enter Dr. B. V. Rao, the founder of Venkateshwara Hatcheries — or, as you probably know it, Venky’s. Inspired by how Dr. Verghese Kurien revolutionised India’s dairy industry, he wanted to do the same for eggs. He travelled across the country, brought farmers together, helped them meet traders and policymakers, and tried to unite a fragmented sector.

His goal was simple — create collective bargaining strength to prevent catastrophic price collapses.

This eventually led to the creation of a common platform called the NECC.

In 1982, NECC declared its first official egg prices. And from that day, it became a price-discovery platform that protected farmers from manipulation and helped ensure they received fair, stable prices.

But fairness wasn’t enough. Back then, Indians weren’t eating enough eggs due to myths like they were “heaty”, “unhealthy”, “not meant for summers”, and so on. So NECC also took on the job of boosting consumption. The ad campaign that followed — “Sunday ho ya Monday…”, became iconic, and many countries later replicated the model.

All of this helped NECC become the industry’s central price-setting voice. As of 2022, NECC had over 25,000 farmer members, and it set prices through a zonal system. Zonal committees met frequently and considered supply, demand, input costs such as feed, labour, electricity, veterinary costs, and local consumption patterns to arrive at daily price declarations.

But here’s the catch. Even though NECC revolutionised the industry, it wasn’t a government body. It had no legal authority to fix prices. Its prices were meant to be advisory, not binding.

But that wasn’t how things turned out.

In 2022, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) pulled up NECC for exactly this reason. CCI found that while NECC called its prices “declared rates”, the industry treated them as mandatory. Zonal heads coordinated on WhatsApp and phone calls, farmers were discouraged from selling below NECC rates, and there were even informal threats of penalties. NECC also urged farmers to cull flocks early (essentially reducing the number of birds, sometimes even healthy ones, to cut supply) or hold back eggs in storage during low-demand periods to prevent prices from falling.

And CCI wasn’t having any of this. It concluded that these actions amounted to cartel-like price-fixing, which is illegal. After which NECC could continue sharing price data, but had to clearly state that its prices were only suggestions, and farmers were free to choose their own rates.

The thing, however, is this. When 25,000 farmers in a concentrated sector follow the same platform, “suggested prices” naturally become de facto market prices. Retailers can’t really buy outside NECC-aligned sources without losing access to the bulk of the supply.

Sure, some regions operate outside NECC’s ecosystem and some commercial or small farms independently set prices. But broadly, NECC still shapes the market.

And now that you know exactly how egg pricing works in India and why it works this way, that brings us back to Namakkal.

Namakkal is technically the export hub, with over 1,000 producer members, even though Andhra Pradesh is India’s largest egg producer, contributing nearly 18% of the country’s output. And that’s simply because Namakkal sits much closer to ports like Thoothukudi and Kochi. Its eggs reach Middle Eastern markets in about four days — far quicker than the roughly two weeks it takes from Andhra Pradesh, which is also why the benchmark price from Namakkal carries weight.

And right now, Namakkal’s benchmark price has hit record highs for a few reasons.

For one, production has dropped. Continuous rains this year moistened and damaged feed, especially maize brought in from neighbouring states, causing fungal infections. Since feed quality directly affects output, production fell by roughly 7–10%.

At the same time, demand has shot up. Winter naturally pushes people to eat more eggs, everyday consumption rises, and bakeries ramp up production for cakes, cookies, and festive desserts, adding another 20–30 lakh eggs a day during Christmas and New Year. And that’s enough to push prices up, especially when production is already struggling.

And maybe the protein craze in India has added a bit of fuel to the fire too. Eggs are still the cheapest source of protein around. One regular egg gives you about 5–6 grams of protein, which works out to roughly ₹1 per gram (even at a higher retail price of ₹8) — far more affordable than pricey protein powders that not everyone can buy. And with nearly a quarter of India eating eggs, that extra demand definitely shows up.

But while this benchmark price rise is great on paper for poultry farmers, it’s not exactly a windfall. Their production cost in Namakkal sits around ₹4.50–4.75 per egg, which means they’re still operating on pretty thin margins even at ₹6 a piece.

So how do we improve their margins, you ask?

One way is to reduce volatility in feed costs. Feed accounts for 60–70% of total production expenses, with maize and soybean meal as the core ingredients. Unlike farmers in developed markets who hedge feed prices through commodity futures (basically, advance contracts that let them lock in today’s feed prices for future use), Indian farmers have no hedging mechanisms. If the government creates support frameworks or stabilisation policies for feed, similar to MSP (Minimum Support Price)-style systems used for grains in some states, it could help protect farmers during volatile seasons.

Another problem we’d need to tackle is disease management. India follows a “detect and cull” policy for avian influenza rather than preventive vaccination, unlike Europe or the US. This means every outbreak risks mass culling and productivity loss. Vaccination can mitigate this, and the government has begun moving in this direction.

And hopefully, these measures will finally give farmers some breathing room with better margins, steadier incomes, and the comfort of knowing that they’re getting a fair price for the eggs they work so hard to produce.

Until next time…

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