Hyderabad: Habanero Foods International, an Indian manufacturer of packaged food products that include sauces, salsa, pasta and tortilla wraps, finds Hyderabad as one of the fastest growing markets in India, and is strengthening its ties with modern retail in the city.
The company is also fast expanding its presence in tier-1 and tier-2 cities of India and is talking to investors to raise $2 million (Rs 15 crore) shortly for its expansion.
The company operates across major markets of India such as Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Goa, Pune, Mumbai, Coimbatore and Vijayawada. It has expanded its range of products in Hyderabad offline market recently and will be expanding in other major cities in both the Telugu States.
In Hyderabad, the company has partnered with players such as Ratnadeep, Balaji, Metro and Q-Mart. The company aims to make its products available across stores to help people cook in their homes as well as provide easy and convenient cooking options for the HoReCa (Home, Restaurant and Café) segment. The company has created 1 kg and 5 kg packaging for this segment to meet the volume and pricing expectations.
Griffith David, founder, Habanero Foods, told Telangana Today, “Having started restaurant business which is capital intensive, we saw great prospects for retail business and started scaling up by tapping into modern retail from second half of 2019. We are creating world-class import quality products at Indian prices by sourcing all ingredients locally.”
“We further curated flavours from across South Africa, US, Mexico and other markets. We today make peri-peri, barbeque sauce, hot sauce, sriracha and pasta sauces, salsas and tortilla wraps for the B2C and B2B market. B2C remains a major segment in terms of sales contribution. Hyderabad is among our major markets in the country,” he added.
The company has a manufacturing and R&D facility near Bengaluru airport. Habanero’s products are also sold on Amazon, Flipkart, BigBasket and other e-commerce platforms, through a series of R&D outcomes. It also carries out nine-month shelf-life studies to keep the quality high. There are 12 SKUs at present and adding another 30-35 in the near future.
Before the pandemic, offline was contributing 80 per cent sales and online 20 per cent, but after the pandemic outbreak, the sales contribution reversed. Gradually, with restaurant business coming back to life, demand for the company’s products is expected to go up, boosting B2B revenues, he added.
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