Going ahead in its endeavour to cater to the specific needs of diabetic and health conscious Indian consumers, Diat Foods India plans to venture in the retail business. The company, which manufactures sugar free, high fibre, low glycemic foods such as traditional Indian mithais (sweets), cookies, cakes, chocolates, honey, jams, jellies and a host of other confectionaries, under the brand Sugarless Bliss, will soon introduce store chain under the same brand name.
The stores will offer the entire product range manufactured by Diat Foods along with imported organic and low-calorie packaged food products from across the world. The stores will also sport a separate section stocking pharmaceutical products for diabetics. “Through these stores, we want to address the special and functional needs of diabetic patients and weight watchers. Apart from the pacakged products, our stores will have counter for fresh foods such as cakes, cookies chocolates etc, which will be made using Diat Food’s proprietary ingredients manufactured in our unit. We are working on the entire plan along with our working partners in different countries,” Deepak Awatramani, MD, Diat Foods India informs Indiaretailing.
He further adds, “Sugarless Bliss stores will operate on franchisee model though we are yet to finalise on franchising partners.”
The manufacturer has an extensive pan-India retail foray plan. Awatramani elaborates, “We wish to open around 12 stores covering major metro cities, two to four stores to cater the needs of tier II cities and one store each in tier III cities. The store size would vary from minimum 300 sq.ft of carpet area to 800-1000 sq.ft of carpet area. By the end of current year, we will start setting up the infrastructure at the selected locations and hope to have all the stores operational by mid of 2011.”
Diat Foods has set an investment budget of approximately Rs.250 crore for the entire venture.
— Juhi Sharma
