As it rolls out frozen prawns in select cities,ITC has lined up a few more product offerings — potatoes, tomatoes and onions — in the packaged foods category across the frozen, chilled, cool and ambient shelf-life segments.

ITC Agri Business Division Chief Executive Officer S Sivakumar told BusinessLine that the rollout of ITC Master Chef Frozen Prawns is under way in Hyderabad and Delhi. Segregated into different sizes and individually quick frozen, the prawns are offered in 200 gm packs for retail consumers and larger packs for institutional customers.

Of the ₹30,000 crore worth of prawns produced in India, domestic sales are pegged at ₹8,000 crore. Of this ₹8,000 crore, only ₹300 crore is sold in packaged form. While institutional sales would be around ₹200 crore, the rest is consumed by the retail market.

“There is a huge scope for increasing the size of the pie in the frozen market space. In the next three months, we will introduce the frozen prawn products in other top metros like Mumbai, Kolkatata, Bengaluru and Chennai,” he said.

‘Fresh’ misconceptions In an interview with BusinessLine , Sivakumar said there were several misconceptions about ‘freshness’ of perishable commodities. “it typically takes 2-3 days from catching a prawn, to transporting it to the wholesale market and finally reaching retail stores. Ideally, to keep the freshness of prawns and retain the nutrition, you need to freeze them within 15 hours of catching them. If you can do that and store at minus 18 degrees, you can keep them fresh for two years,” he observed.

Potatoes, onions, tomatoes After prawns, ITC will soon roll out frozen or otherwise processed potatoes, onions and tomatoes. Sivakumar felt that most farmers grew crops based on the previous season’s demand. “Consequently we see prices falling at harvest time. On the other hand, consumers see prices going up soon after. Both farmers and consumers are unhappy,” he said.

“To beat this, we need to replicate what we have done with milk — an end-to-end chain. Earlier, different players were working in silos working at different levels (of creating infrastructure). You need to work on all of these simultaneously. I think it is happening now,” he said.

The firm is also planning to introduce dehyrdrated onions. “The domestic market size of dehydrated onions is a very insignificant part of the total quantity of onions consumed now,” he said. But, given farmer and consumer dissatisfaction with price volatility, the time is ripe for changing this, he said.

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