Schauna Chauhan ​​​​​​- Adding Fizz And Froth

Schauna Chauhan Has Taken Parl Agro From A Turnover Of 600 Crore To Close To A 4,200 Crore Fruity Drink Giant.

- Arnika Thakur

AS THE STORY GOES, MIRZA GHALIB once wrote to a friend about his anguish at not being able to eat enough of his favourite fruit, mangoes. Ghalib, about 60 at the time, complained he could not eat “more than 10 or 12 in a sitting... and if they are large, then just six or seven”. We feel Ghalib’s pain. As the summer rolls around, we too can’t have our fill of the succulent fruit, however hard we try. It’s hardly surprising then that this passion for mangoes has launched thousands of businesses in the country. Mango toffee. Mango juice. Even mango frappuccino. But perhaps the most iconic of them is Frooti, one of the country’s largest selling mango-flavoured drinks from the house of Parlé Agro, among the leading players in the fruit drinks market in India.

It isn’t an easy business. Every year, Parlé Agro has about two months to buy and process Totapuri mangoes from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, to make pulp for Frooti for the whole year, which is then sold in about 50 countries. And every year the mango crop gives a lot of anxiety to Schauna Chauhan, CEO of Parlé Agro. “Every single year, we are analysing is it going to be a good crop, or a bad crop, and what is the demand that is going to come out in the market,” Schauna, the oldest of founder Prakash Chauhan’s three daughters, tells me in her office at the end of a quiet street in Mumbai.