1-4 September, 2006 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India
    VH Group Gears Up To Become A Household Name
Pulses and atta in the new plan of action


Its called share of the plate: first, it was chicken and eggs, now; it is pulses and whole-wheat flour (atta) which the Rs 1700-crore Venkateshwara Hatcheries (VH) group has begun to retail to fill the consumers plate. The aim is to be a household name with branded products for the housewife.

That is for starters: as with chicken, so with pulses and atta, the group will look at the ready-to-eat segment in these areas, too. As it is, the group has recently launched chicken pickle to fill up the chicken platter.

VH is at the drawing board stage for ready-to-eat preparations for pulses and atta. It is going to launch atta in select markets in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in the first week of December, under the `Uttara` Foods brand. It began the pulses business through the wholesale route about six months age and have now moved to retail. It will add more products to this range of pulses and atta in the next month. The poultry feed manufacturing company, now foraying into the household segment, already wholesales oil, which too it could retail.

VH is confident about being able to take on the competition of the big established players in the atta segment and has sent out samples to over 3,000 distributors across the country and the response has been very encouraging.

VH group appears to be banking on is its knowledge of the market and the retail expertise in marketing the existing range of chicken products. With 10 pelletisation plants across the country and a well-established supply chain, it was a natural progression, Rao indicated. Moreover, being a manufacturer of poultry feed, they have linkages with the growers. So, it is no surprise that cola companies and other multinational FMCGs want to have joint promotion schemes of their products with the new Uttara Foods range.

This is a three year-old decision to enter the house-hold segment. A factory is at Aurangabad which handles the `tur` dal, to which ewe have set up a 100 tons per day capacity mill at Pune for the whole wheat flour, sourcing wheat from Rajasthan and MP.

Date: 08-Nov-2004

Back