MTR Foods vies to be Haldiram of South

Speaking to this newspaper, its chief executive officer, Sanjay Sharma said, “We have a total market share of about 65 per cent in all categories ranging from spices, ready mixes to dinner mixes. Going forward, we are planning to venture into snacks category and we have already started its sales in Karnataka. We want to pioneer the South Indian snacking category and that in turn will become our fourth focus area after masala and mixes.”

The company, which is worth Rs 600 crore in terms of business size and has been growing at a rate of 25 per cent in the last five years, is seeing a growth trend in the consumption patterns of the emerging cosmopolitan families, wherein they are adopting to packaged foods and are always on the look out for food on the go.

“Nowadays, the youth mainly in the age group of early 20 to early 30s want food that does not involve too much of cooking and is on-the-go. So for this, we have launched a website through which we can communicate to the youth called the dishcovery.com. In addition, we are also planning to launch our own e-commerce portal by the September exclusively for MTR,” Mr Sharma said.

The convenience food maker has seen a capacity enhancement of Rs 150 crore and its manufacturing unit in Karnataka has a production capacity of 45,000 MT and a utilisation capacity of 60 to 70 per cent.

With specific to the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana market, Mr Sharma informed that after Karnataka, these two regions are the second highest consumer for the company. “We get a revenue of

Rs 75 to Rs 80 crore annually. By this year-end we are looking at getting atleast Rs100 crore out of these two regions — AP and TS,” he explained.