New Delhi, Apr 12 (PTI) German food manufacturer Dr Oetker is expecting its operations in India to clock turnover of Rs 1,000 crore in the next 5-6 years, driven by growth in mayonnaise, peanut butter and ready to eat cakes segments, according to a senior company official.
Dr Oetker, which has emerged as one of the fastest growing mayo, spreads and condiments manufacturers in India, expects its turnover to cross Rs 500 crore in 2022, up from Rs 400 crore last year.
“When we talk about calendar year, this year, we will cross the Rs 500-crore (mark), hoping that there’s not another pandemic coming and not another lockdown… If everything goes as planned, we will not only reach (turnover of) Rs 500 crore, we will surpass it,” Dr Oetker SAARC Managing Director and CEO Oliver Mirza told PTI.
The company, which entered India in 2007 and acquired local brand FunFoods a year later, has been doubling its turnover every four years — from Rs 50 crore in 2009 to Rs 100 crore in 2013, Rs 200 crore in 2017 and Rs 400 crore in 2021, he added.
“That means now we are projecting when we are going to hit the Rs 1,000-crore (mark). In four years, we will probably be (at) Rs 800 crore because we will double and then we assume in five or six years, we will be (at) Rs 1,000 crore,” Mirza said.
When asked what will drive the company’s growth in India, he said it will be “the big three pillars” of mayonnaise, peanut butter, and ready to eat cakes, which the company had forayed into last year.
Bullish on growth in India, he said when Dr Oetker acquired FunFoods in 2008, the size of the mayonnaise market in India was Rs 5 crore and now it stands at Rs 500 crore.
“In 15 years, it has grown from Rs 5 crore to Rs 500 crore and we hold a market share of about 50 per cent. We were able to sustain mayonnaise growth also despite several new entrants coming in,” he said.
On the peanut butter category, Mirza claimed the company’s ‘FunFoods Peanut Butter’ has emerged as the market leader and the company will continue to dominate in both mayonnaise and peanut butter despite the entry of several newcomers in the market.
In terms of manufacturing, the company has invested Rs 300 crore at its master plant at Bhiwadi in Rajasthan which was opened in 2017 with an initial capacity of 25,000 tonnes annually.
“We have by now scaled up the capacity to 50,000 tonnes,” he said, adding the company still has space at the facility and will expand it to 1 lakh tonnes per annum in the future.
The company has an investment cycle of two and half years. The current investment plan is for Rs 100 crore, out of which “half goes into advertising and the other half goes into productive assets which is machinery,” he added. PTI RKL SHW SHW
