Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Indian basmati brand to expand in Middle East

L T Overseas, owners of the Daawat brand of packaged rice, is gearing up to capture a larger chunk of the Middle East packaged rice market.

The company, the first Indian basmati rice brand to have been registered in Saudi Arabia, hopes to garner 20 per cent of the packaged rice market in the region by 2002.

V K Arora, L T Overseas managing director and vice-president of the apex All India Rice Exporters Association, said that Daawat, currently a leading packaged rice brand in India with a 17 per cent market share, plans to sell 40,000 metric tonnes in the Middle East.

The company is looking for partners in the UAE to distribute the brand. It has already finalised distributors in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar.

"We are introducing Daawat directly to the Gulf, while earlier we were selling through private labels," said Arora.

Arora said the Middle East market for Indian basmati had not been affected by rice exports from Pakistan. But he acknowledged that the lower priced rice sales had been hit.

L T Overseas will aggressively advertise Daawat in the Middle East through its exclusive business partner network. It operates three rice-processing plants in Punjab and Haryana with a combined capacity of 500 tonnes a day. Exports make up half of the company's revenues of $60 million.

North America and the Middle East are the two major overseas markets, each accounting for roughly $15 million.

Indo-Asian News Service

Money
Business News

Tell us what you think of this report