Sudipta Dev – Mumbai
Tong Garden, a Singapore based healthy snack company that has factories in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, will soon be coming up with a factory in Ahmedabad. The company exports its products to 35 countries from Thailand. “The factory in Ahmedabad will be coming up in 2018. The company will be expanding its range of products for the India market, and might also export from here. We are going for ‘Make in India’,” said Rajesh Nagur, national sales manager, Tong Garden. The corporate office in India is currently in Mumbai.
For the hospitality sector in India, across all categories, Tong Garden has been providing different products. The favourite products with the hotel industry are party snacks, barbeque broad beans, barbeque peanuts, chicken coated peanuts, salted peanuts, salted almonds and wasabi green peas. Most of the products are 100 per cent vegetarian, there are only two non-vegetarian products – shrimp and chicken flavoured snacks. While party snacks and peanuts are popular with liquor or wines, wasabi and almonds are for mini bars in hotels. “These are healthy snacks without any preservatives or synthetic elements. Our products are 100 per cent natural, and mostly roasted. Only the peanut is lightly fried,” mentioned Nagur.
There is no institutional bulk packaging, the largest pack is of 500 gms. “Hotels from two stars to five stars, mostly from metros and also some Tier II and Tier III markets have been approaching us as they like our products. Depending on the Indian customer and their taste we are trying to introduce new products within the next two years,” stated Nagur.
The company has an entire distribution, from retail segment to modern trade like Hypercities.