Patanjali On The Path To Dominate Rice Market: Acquires RH Agro’s Rice Mill

Patanjali, known for its best-selling products such as cow’s ghee, and ayurvedic toothpaste, Dant Kanti, has drawn up an ambitious strategy to disrupt India’s packaged rice market, which is currently dominated by brands such as India Gate, Kohinoor, Best Basmati and Daawat.

Ramdev’s Patanjali has firmed up plans to add some flavour in the rice category this Diwali. It has acquired RH Agro’s rice mill in Sonipat, Haryana, for Rs 70 crore and has taken four other rice mills across the country on exclusive lease. They aim at launching 18 packaged rice brands by the end of this month.

How will Patanjali benefit from this acquisition?

At present, Patanjali sells three types of packaged rice – silver, gold and diamond. It meets its procurement needs by buying finished rice and packaging it at its Haridwar facility. The new mills will not only give the FMCG company the capability of producing 3.2 lakh tonnes of finished rice a year from paddy but will also allow it to produce region-specific rice variants that it plans to sell locally and export too. “The acquisition will give us technical know-how in rice processing,” said Acharya Balkrishna, MD of Patanjali Ayurved. “We have partnered with thousands of rice farmers in many regions of the country to produce traditional variants.”

Not just Haryana, mills leased pan-India

Other than the mill in Sonipat, which will process basmati, Patanjali has leased two mills in Madhya Pradesh to process the pusa variety. Another mill in Telangana will produce the lightweight aromatic sona masuri to cater to markets in the south, while a mill in Fazilka, Punjab will process rice grains that are grown in the north. Around 150 varieties of rice are currently grown in the country, industry estimates showed.

This aquisition will take patanjali closer to being one of the biggest FMCG companies in India.