Gadre Marine is a processing and packaging unit which was founded in 1978 by Mr. Deepak Gadre and currently is runned by his son Mr. Arjun Gadre.
Gadre challenges the very roots of Indian culture where fish is always served fresh; their authentic frozen seafood touches the very essence of modern Indians looking for a simpler, healthier and tastier alternative.
The feature that makes the company stand out in crowd, is its prime quality of products that the organization is serving.
The company is bootstrapped and has crossed a ball park figure of more than Rs. 500 Crore.
India's first and only Surimi manufacturing plant was set up in Ratnagiri and Gadre Marine since then became the third largest Surimi manufacturer in the world and the largest in India.
The company currently have Chef Vikas Khanna as the brand ambassador. The firm is about to launch one of its kind product and the company will be the only one in India to manufacture that product. They also want to focus on providing the consumers a holistic approach to seafood. Their aim is to be the top retail brand in the India for seafood in next 2 to 5 years.
Gadre had a sales of 250 tonne last fiscal, and targeting sales of 500 tonne this fiscal. For exports they exported 34,000 tonne of fish and produced about 14,000 tonne of value added products. India is a huge market for all types of consumer products.
Export markets go through their ups and downs. Strategically it will be important to be a leader in the Indian market and keep doing exports.
“ In the next 10 years we expect India to be one of the most significant markets “ said by the Founder.
The market for Frozen foods in India has grown at double digit growth rate in last few years reaching a size of about INR 19 Billion in 2012. Although the growth number looks impressive, it does not truly reflect the future growth potential of the industry. More than 45% of the current market is composed of export of minimally processed marine products, meat products, fruits and vegetables. Domestic per-capita consumption of frozen food is close to negligible and is about 50 times less than our counterparts in China.
Though, the retail market for frozen food products, compared to its size in 2008 has doubled to INR 3650 million in 2012, it is still primarily driven by minimally processed vegetables. The market share of high value products such as ready meals in the consumption basket has remained constant during the last five years.
The tastes and habits of the consumers in India are changing. Especially in seafood, now the customers are accepting the frozen fish due to its good quality and availability throughout the year. Also the young generation prefer ready to cook and ready to eat seafood due to its cooking convenience. Fish has been eaten mainly in the coastal regions in our country. But now seafood is becoming very popular all across the region, even in the interiors. There is a growing demand for good quality frozen seafood.
BW Reporters
This is Chitrakshi Suneja currently pursuing graduation and diploma in journalism and mass communication. She is crazy about Writing stuff on Startups, Entrepreneurs and reading as well.
