The Indian apple market is evolving into a more organized sector. New players are entering this nascent market every year. Global biggies like Del Monte, Capespan, Univeg have formed joint ventures with Indian companies to explore new opportunities. Mr. Kartik Jalan, a young entrepreneur and the CEO of Kailash Agro, gives an insight into this rapid evolving market.
“It’s a more than one billion people country hungry for premium quality fruits. The opportunities are endless.”
What has been your journey so far?
“We have been active on the Indian apple market over the last five years and on the orange market for the last two years. We started with trading and saw good returns in our first year. We realized early that if we can manage the cold chain, then we could control and guarantee the quality of our fresh produce. In this endeavor, we setup our own 2000 MT CA Cold Storage facility near Delhi NCR in 2013-14. We have delved in a number of crops over the past years like ginger, cabbage, potato, onion, apple, oranges and green peas. “
“Apples and oranges have been our main stays and we strive to increase our focus on these fruits. We have evolved our customer base across channels and service wholesalers like Mandi’s, as well as the modern retail players like Aditya Birla Retail, Reliance Retail and other leading e-commerce players in India. “
“We have recently launched our own apple brand, called Superfruit. We have also piloted online sales in a controlled manner to see responses and acceptability and we got good response including repeat orders for family packaging of 10kg.”
“This season we have also started an organic produce vertical farm and are supplying to national players like Motherdairy, I Say Organic, Dubendengreen, etc.”
“We usually start procurement at the end of August for apples. We buy the produce directly from farmers in India. During the season, we supply Indian wholesale markets and online/ offline retailers. We store apples that have a particularly good color and firmness. We are able to store and maintain the freshness of these apples until March and April the next year. This enables us to supply our customers also during the offseason. We have 2,000 metric tons of Controlled Atmosphere capacity near Delhi.”.
“Indian customers are now demanding and consuming apples through the year, even if it's the off season. They are very familiar with imported apples. There are currently a number of companies that import apples. The imported apple market is very competitive and price is an important decision maker, hence we are looking forward to starting our own import program.”
“Countries that are currently exporting apples to India are China, New Zealand and the US. China is a large exporter of Fuji apples and huge quantities of Washington apples are coming from the US. New Zealand exports Mister Apple into India. Indian customers are not looking for the best quality apples and the market is very competitive on price. The color and the appearance of the skin are important. Nobody uses apples for cooking in India. If the apples are red, without clear damage, sweet and crunchy then they posses the most important qualities Indian buyers are looking for. The import market is gaining momentum. India has also started to import apples from Poland and Belgium, and there might even be apples coming over from Spain. Local Indian apples, Gala or Red Delicious, are also crunchy and sweet.”
“At this moment we have stored 700 metric tons of apples in our CA cold storage facilities. Regarding apples, we want to grow to 800 metric tons, so not a big increase. We do want to increase the quality of the apples we procure, preferably getting them waxed as well before storage in CA. In addition, we want to diversify our product offering by adding import varieties to our product range. In other production markets, including Poland, the US and China, production is more mechanized and quality and appearance of the apples are much more consistent.”
