Amit Burman plans food courts

Amit Burman, founder of Dabur Foods, is planning to launch food courts in shopping malls, office complexes, at national highways as well as mini-restaurants at metro stations. It is estimated that India would have around 250 new malls by 2010.

Burman, along with two other partners, Rohit Aggarwal and Tejpavan Singh Gandhok, has invested close to Rs 200 crore in the venture.The partners hope to reach a sales target of Rs 1,000 crore, with retail outlets across 200 locations, in the next three years.

Burman, who currently operates nine franchisees of Subway, has tied up with Dubai-based Hot Brands to start quick service food joints serving Chinese, Italian, Thai and Indian cuisines. “We will also acquire local companies from small cities to address specific regional tastes,” shares Burman.

Read more in The Business Standard article.

Dabur to merge foods biz with FMCG

Homegrown FMCG major Dabur India Limited (DIL) on Wednesday said it will merge its wholly-owned subsidiary Dabur Foods Limited (DFL) with itself.The Board of Directors of DIL approved the merger with retrospective effect from April 1, a company statement said.

"We believe this merger is a unique opportunity to combine the strengths of a foods company with those of a growing and profitable FMCG business to create an extraordinarily strong and rapidly growing global competitor in the health and wellness space," Dabur India CEO Sunil Duggal said.

He said DFL is an intrinsic part of DIL's growth strategy and has been one of the fastest growing businesses, reporting a 35 per cent CAGR for the past five years.Through the merger, DIL is looking to extract synergies and unlock operational efficiencies for DFL sharpen focus on the high growth business of foods and beverages, and enter newer product categories in this space, it added.