Company profile

Incorporated in 1965, LT Foods is in the business of milling, processing and marketing of branded & non-branded rice and manufacturing of rice food products in the domestic and overseas market. Their operations involve contract farming, procurement, storage, processing, packaging and distribution. LT Foods also engaged in research & development to add value to rice and rice food products. Their product portfolio comprises brown rice, white rice, steamed rice, parboiled rice, organic rice, quick cooking rice, value added rice and flavored rice in the ready to cook segment.

LT Foods has presence in more than 35 countries including USA, Canada, UK and the European Union. LT Foods has ISO 9000:2001, HACCP and the SQF certification in quality. LT Foods owns 19 brands. Daawat Basmati Rice is one of the very popular brands among Basmati Rice all over the world.

Challenges faced by LT Foods

Category related - There are already lot of basmati rice brands available in the market. Also the challenge of branding a commodity remains.

Competition related - Daawat got a tough competition from Satnam Overseas Ltd. (Kohinoor) and KRBL Ltd. (India gate)

Enter TPT – the brand building catalyst - Other than regular visibility in Femina, Delhi Times and Navbharat Times, the following two key activities were conceptualized and executed for LT Foods:

ET CEO Cookout: LT Foods joined hands with The Economic Times to bring the prestigious CEO Cookout to Delhi, Bangalore & Kolkata. The activity was carried out targeting Investor community as the company felt the investor community was not able to link Daawat – the brand with LT Foods – the company.

Daawat book on “Finest Rice Recipes” with Times Group Books: Conceptualized by Private Treaties team in sync with Times Group Books and edited & compiled by Sabina Sehgal Saikia, the book is a compilation of 50 delectable rice dishes from best chefs across the globe. Co-branded book of Daawat and Times Group Books is available across all big retail book stores in the country. This helped Daawat with positive rub-off of association with Times Group.

Daawat Book Launch:

Pre event hype:

Consumer connect through Rice recipe contest run through ads in Delhi Times - Winner announced at the launch ceremony

OMS front page story on Riddhima Kapoor launching the book on the day of the launch

Event

Who’s who of food circuits were present at the ceremony including HT’s editor Vir Sanghvi

50 dishes from the book were prepared and laid out at the ceremony; Chefs from five star hotels felicitated

Post event

Event amplified through coverage in Launch Pad through OMS

Due to event merit, Times of India main covered the story and even HT Brunch did the book review

Books are now available

Market place reflections

Today LT Foods is ranked among the top 10 food processing companies in Northern India. And is ranked among the top 50 companies by Dun and Bradstreet 8th Edition of India’s Top 500 companies 2007. Daawat is registered as one of the premium and top basmati rice brands in the country.

In Dec 2006, LT Foods issued an IPO which got over subscribed 7.18 times. IPO received great response from retail investors and Qualified Institutional Buyers with part reserved for them getting oversubscribed by 7.69 times and 4.29 times. The offer, which closed on Friday, received decent response from Qualified Institutional Buyers with the portion reserved for them being oversubscribed eight times.

LTO bought US based $20-million Kusha Inc. in Dec 2007, post which Daawat group’s share in the US retail market increased from 7% to about 51%, making it the largest basmati rice retailer in the country. First time in the Industry, an Indian rice player had acquired a US Company.

The company plans to launch the range of rice based ready to cook /eat products in the first quarter of 2009.

In the last two years Country’s top line has grown by 20% while net profit has gone up by 2.5 times

In 2007, LT Foods set up State-of-the-art plant set up in the Mandideep, Bhopal (MP) for Parboiled Rice, which has huge demand in export markets.