An eye for the ice cream business

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Dairy Den, a small ice cream parlour in the Ashram Road area of Ahmedabad, was set up by Fulchand Shah in 1969, after migrating from East Africa.

It was started with an initial investment of Rs 8,000 only, by importing an ice cream vending machine from Italy.

At present, the turnover of the company exceeds Rs 58 crore.

Bharat Shah and Harish Shah, both sons of Fulchand Shah, joined the family business in 1986 and took the agency of Carpigiani of Italy, one of the world's renowned ice cream vending machine manufacturers.

"Dairy Den at present holds the exclusive distributorship of Carpigiani of Italy for selling ice cream vending machines in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka," said Bharat Shah, managing director, Dairy Den.

Bharat Shah, as part of the expansion, invested Rs 10 lakh in 1988 in setting up a factory at Gandhinagar to manufacture ingredients of ice creams, which include powders, syrups, flavours and toppings.

An outlet was opened at Vadodara in 1988, with an investment of Rs 20 lakh.

In 2000, Dairy Den introduced 'Yums', a low-fat and high-protein soft ice cream, which costs only Rs five, and entered into the dairy business by investing Rs 4.5 crore to set up a manufacturing plant at Kury with a production capacity of 1.25 lakh liters per day.

With more than 25 per cent of the market share in the ice cream segment, the company enjoys the number one position.

Dairy Den has installed more than 300 vending machines across the country on a franchisee basis.

In the milk segment, it sells more than 18,000 liters per day. "At present, there is a tremendous scope to export ice cream ingredients and machinery to various parts of the world, and we expect a 30 per cent increase in our turnover," Bharat Shah said.

The company plans to invest Rs 40 crore as part of its major expansion drive in adding up more outlets throughout the country.

"We are focusing on expanding our outlets within the country. We had already tied up with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) to set up our retail outlets in the various petrol pumps across the country," Shah said.

Shah spends his leisure time reading philosophy and surfing the Net.