 "Rasna plans to inaugurate its Andhra Pradesh facility by Jan 2016")
Speaking on the sidelines of CII's Foodpro 2015, Piruz Khambatta, chairman and managing director, Rasna Private Ltd said that the new facility will manufacture both drinks and food.
The new unit will have a capacity to produce 250 million glasses in a year.
The company is now slowly rolling out cornflakes for break fast and other snacks, said Khambatta.
"We are going slow due to product approval. Trying to do some testing. Will launch in the markets soon. Two more products are delayed due to product approval," he said without sharing any details further.
The company will be more aggressive in the health category, said Khambatta. He noted, Rasna has full range of vitaminised products. The company also joined hands with Britannia biscuits for cross promotion, since biscuits have the highest penetration. With every Rasna pack that costs Rs 30 or Rs 40 a pack of Britannia biscuits worth Rs 10 will be given for free.
On exports, he said, big challenge for companies like Rasna is marketing. "If I need to list in super market it will take about $1-1.5 million, with compulsory visibility. Need a bandwidth to put the money," said Khambatta, whose company gets 30 per cent of the revenue from export markets including West Asia, Singapore, UK, US and others.
While calling for change in export policies to boost food exports from the country, Khambatta said to support this the government should look at developing enough scale to cater to both domestic and export markets.
"There should be a mission mode on food processing -'Food From India'- in the same way as 'Digital India' and 'Skill India'. In order to carry out this mission, there should be the ease of doing business on regulatory issues. The industry should also place great emphasis on quality with voluntary compliance," he said.There should also be massive mobilisation of skills and talents for the success of the mission 'Food From India', he said.