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Balaji Wafers to go global
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Saturday, 03 March, 2007, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Meghanadan S, Mumbai
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ani brothers from Rajkot (Saurashtra) - Meghjibhai, Chandubhai, bhikubhai and Kanubhai are giving the MNCs a bite for their money. Two decades ago, they never though that one day the snack foods business will be worth a mouth-watering Rs 125 crore. Balaji Wafers has emerged more than a munch for Pepsi's Frito-Lay, with almost 70% of Gujarat's wafers market in its pocket.
Born to a farming family in the nondescript Dhundhoraji village in Jamnagar district, brothers Virani first dirtied their hands in the diamond and agriculture kits business in the mid 1970s but the effort ended in disaster. "We tried trading in diamonds and agricultural kits. But lost the entire Rs 20,000 capital our father gave us," says Chandubhai, managing director of Balaji Wafers Pvt Ltd.
Chandubhai and his brother Meghjibhai next took up jobs in Rajkot's Astron cinema selling refreshments. Later when the cinema owner Govindbhai handed over the canteen to them on contract basis in 1976, Chandubhai introduced sandwiches, with a little help from the ladies of his household who supplied him with exotic home-made masala. The sandwiches soon went on to prove an instant hit in the Saurashtra region. Even today, the Viranis continue selling their sandwiches, though they rake in less than a fraction of their turnover.
Noticing early on that potato wafers constitute 80% of the refreshment sale, the brothers decided to turn that into their core business. That's when Balaji was born. With the gradual automation that began in 1993, Balaji today has the capacity to produce 1,200 kg wafers per hour. The Viranis even took a Rs 15 crore loan from Corporation Bank to mechanise the production. The technology was sourced from the US, the UK and Germany to help improve quality.
If market estimates are to be believed, the Viranis have built a Rs 150 crore business out of potato wafers. Of course, the brothers themselves refuse to reveal the size of their profit and sales. However, market estimates say that it could be around Rs 125 crore.
All that they say, instead, is that in the first 10 years, 1982-92, while the business grew, the revenues were small. So even as the family shifted to a 750 sq-yard house in the city, family members continued to do most of the processing, including procuring potatoes, cleaning them, frying and even packaging them. From going about distributing the product on a moped, they bought a rickshaw two years later. A tempo was subsequently added with a Rs 1.8 lakh loan from a bank
Even till five years ago, the Viranis sold their Balaji wafers in simple polythene packets. That's till the reach and spread of the multinational brands first brought fear of brands into their hearts. The brothers first decided to import a packaging machine from the US potato wafers also gave way to an entire range of snack foods from banana wafers to faradi chevdo to alu bhujia, chana dal, moong dal and the works, out of a plush factory spread over 85,000 sq m.
Today, Chandubhai says his most challenging job was not branding and strengthening the distribution network but making fried moong dal. Moong dal frying requires right fire temperature, because you cannot afford to keep the dal frying for one minute more or less. If that happens, the dal loses its color and taste: precision frying is essential. "It took us six months to make moong dal. Till then, it simply didn't work," he says.
Today Balaji sells almost 15 products and recently entered markets in Maharashtra and Rajasthan. That's taking the fight right into the multinational land of bhujias and wafers. What's more, the Viranis themselves could soon become a multinational. "There's tremendous scope for exports and we are receiving demand from various countries. But our priority is to satiate the local demand first," says Chandubhai.
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