Fish Tales

Frozen Food Maker West coast Is Betting on Tilapia to Boost India’s Nutritional Intake—and the Company’s Bottom Line.
 

- Pavan Lall

Kamlesh Gupta is vegetarian but he made his fortune selling prawns. The finance graduate from Temple University, Philadelphia, began at the bottom of the value chain 20 years ago selling feed for prawns. Today, his Mumbai-based WestCoast Group is one of India’s leading frozen food manufacturers dishing out around 800,000 kg of prawns a year.

Now, Gupta is looking for more on his plate. Sensing the potential of India’s largely unused water bodies, the 48-year old businessman wants to ride on an aquaculture boom in India and farm fresh fish in the country’s lakes. Two years ago, he set up a fish farm at a popular picnic spot between rolling hills an hour-and-a-half ’s drive from Pune in Maharashtra where he breeds sea bass, basa, and tilapia.

Gupta expects tilapia, a fast-growing freshwater fish sometimes dubbed “aquatic chicken”, to be his next big catch. Tilapia, native to Africa, is finding favour across the world because it is rich in protein, breeds quickly, and is cheap to farm. “I want to serve cheap protein to the masses,” says Gupta. “The common man can’t afford chicken or red meat. Tilapia, therefore, would be a revolution.”

To be clear, tilapia as a nutrition source for the masses is an idea floated by the Indian government and its fisheries department. The species is easy to farm, resistant to most diseases, and requires few antibiotics. More significantly, it sells for as little as Rs 100 per kg—chicken can be Rs 50 more, and prawns sell for Rs 700 a kg, if not more.

Hence, authorities provide easy access to finance through the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development to set up fish farms. Some state governments provide further subsidies. But, so far, interest has been limited to Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Gupta’s WestCoast has now widened the pool to India’s western states.