Allana Group, Captain Fresh Joe

Allana Group, one of India’s largest private food companies and a leading meat exporter, has joined hands with Captain Fresh, a major Indian player in the seafood market, to open approximately 4,000 retail stores across India over the next four years.

In the joint venture (JV) called Indian Retail Alliance Private Limited (IRAPL), Allana Group will hold 51 per cent stake, while Captain Fresh will hold about 49 per cent stake.

The platform will retail a wide range of fresh proteins including seafood, chicken and mutton across the pan India network. It will serve customers through standalone stores, shop-in-shop formats and HORECA (hotels, restaurants and catering) channels, creating an integrated demand network for fresh protein across India.

An official statement said, “Captain Fresh will bring together its seafood supply chain capabilities with an omni-channel technology stack under its retail brand ‘ChopServe’, complemented by Allana Group’s deep expertise and best-in-class infrastructure in chicken, ready-to-eat and protein processing. Together, the platform aims to connect the product and supply chain leadership of both partners with market-facing retail entrepreneurs to streamline India’s fragmented protein industry.” Is.”

Captain Fresh Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) and Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Utham Gowda said the group had a retail presence since 2020, which was scaled down in 2022 to focus more on the US and Europe as a major B2B (business-to-business) supplier.

“We started in 2020 and started exiting this (retail) business in 2022. We are present currently, but we are at just 5 per cent of what we were in 2022. Earlier, we were doing a business of around Rs 800-900 crore. Now it is less than 10 per cent of that,” Gowda told Business Standard.

He said what Captain Fresh has learned from its limited foray into retail is that doing only seafood business in the Indian market cannot be successful as Indian retail deals with both seafood and animal proteins.

“We had only built our competency in seafood, so animal protein was a limitation. That was lesson number one. Lesson number two is to take product leadership and work on the product side rather than just the channel side. And on the channel side, bring in as many small and medium entrepreneurs as possible so that they can take care of the end market because there are many things that cannot be arranged at our level. The third lesson is to use technology as much as possible in terms of aggregating all these components so that we operate as a single company. I can work,” Gowda said.

So this time, “we’ve tried to get all that right”, he said.

“We have the Allana Group, which brings leadership in poultry and animal proteins. We are one of the largest seafood players in the world, so we bring that expertise from the US and Europe back to India. Second, it is a platform where we attract entrepreneurs who run 5-10 stores in a city or micro market. We bring them on this platform, where they sell our products and also enhance the quality. Third, we have There is a software platform called ChopServ, which is mature and tested over the last three-four years. It is deployed in retail chains like Spar and Nature’s Basket, Gowda said.

He said that these are the three ways in which Captain Fresh wants to re-enter the market with strength.