The new variant is priced at Rs 55 for a one-litre pack. According to Marico Industries chief executive officer (health care) Pranab Datta, "As a strategy, we felt the need to have a presence in the soya oils market which has a good demand in the northern and easters regions of the country. Further, soya is large crop with a good growth potential."

Godrej Foods is another player in the branded edible-oils market which is evaluating alternatives to launch an edible-oil variant in soya taking advantage of the fact that a number of consumers are now shifting to the branded and packaged refined oils market.

The main branded player in the soya category is `Vital' from SM Dyechem which has a market share of roughly 3 per cent in the overall market. Other brands in this category, if any, are largely regional players.

Marico has two edible oilbrands--Sweekar and Saffola. The Godrej brands are Cooklite and Godrej Sunflower.

Branded edible-oil manufacturers are seriously looking at the soya oil category to exploit the current boom in demand for branded oils.

The demand for soya oil is predominant in the northern and eastern markets of the country. Sweekar refined soya oil has been launched in the northern states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. This will eventually be extended to other major states in the region.

With not many strong brands in the soya market today, big companies are waiting in the wings to tap this segment.

The soya crop is unique in the sense that unlike other oil crops, the meal content (cake) in soya is high with the oil content being only 17 per cent. In seed form, the soya crop volume is close to six million tonnes. Theoretically speaking, the oil yield will be around 7.5 lakh tonnes which, according to industry experts, is a huge market to tap.

Among all categories, sunflower oil is the fastest growing in thebranded edible-oils market. This category recorded a growth of almost 8 per cent when the total branded segment grew at 5 per cent last year.