Indian biscuit maker takes aim at soy market
The company announced last week that it would enter the market first with packaged soy bean chunks, to be branded as Priya Soya, which would be initially be sold in West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.
According to the statement, the company has set up a soy manufacturing plant in Dhulagarh Food Park near Kolkata, which would this month start producing 3,000 tonnes of soy chunks per annum.
Priya Food Products managing director, G P Agarwal, told local media recently that it expected to get 25% of the market share in the first year of its operations thanks to growing demand in eastern India.
“In eastern India alone, the soy chunk market is estimated to be about US$20m. We expect to notch up a turnover of US$5m from our soy business by the end of the first year,” he told Financial Chronicle.
According to Agarwal, his lead state in eastern India is West Bengal, which currently imports a sizeable volume of its soy chunk consumption, as there was no local soy manufacturing there until his company’s new plant. Soy chunks are also known as textured soy protein.
“Thanks to our savings on freight, our products will be priced much lower than the other brands,” he said, adding that his company would work to promote the food as healthy and affordable by doctor connect programmes across the region.”
“We will also be organising soy chunks food festivals in neighbourhood housing societies. We have already drawn up plans to organise food festivals in 300 housing complexes where experts will teach soy chunks cooking in micro oven,” he said.
According to the statement, the company would make Priya Soya available across 100,000 FMCG outlets in the region within the first six months and across 400,000 by March 2012.
