The Hindu Business Line : Success through hi-quality designer cutlery

Cutlery has been one of the lowest priorities in the Indian kitchen and dining table and even those buying expensive crockery would not normally buy quality cutlery.

Ahmedabad , Jan. 11

What he couldn't buy just two years ago, he is selling now across 75 towns and cities in India. A chance failure to buy quality cutlery for his wife even in a city like Mumbai inspired this engineer-turned-MBA quit a white-collar job in a multinational corporation there and establish himself as a cutlery-maker in Delhi.

Within a year, he has seen the turnover reach Rs 6 crore and hopes to increase it to Rs 30 crore by 2010.

Quality

Even quality crockery-makers do not make good cutlery because it involves stainless steel.said Mr Adish Jain, founder-Director of the FnS, the Delhi-based Forks and Spoons India Inc. In any case, cutlery has been one of the lowest priorities in the Indian kitchen and dining table and even those buying expensive crockery would not normally buy quality cutlery.

Designer cutleries

The company now makes 14 kinds of designer cutleries in six different packagings, the technologies for which it has sourced from Italy, France and Denmark and adopted them to specific Indian needs. It caters to all segments of customers with a price-range between Rs 16 and Rs 200 per spoon. The company is also offering cutlery sets in the price-range between Rs 280 for steel-makes and Rs 9,500 for those with gold-carvings. Specialised wedding gift sets of cutlery have also been designed for brides, he added.

Last year, the company launched designer chopsticks in steel and its popular brand of cutlery (forks, spoons and table knives) for children. The company is also considering making light-weight cutlery for adults, he told Business Line here.

Specialised cutlery

Moreover, the company is now poised to introduce specialised cutlery — combinations of forks, spoons and knives — for special Indian habits, for instance, cutting and eating fruits such as mango and water-melon and items such as namkeens (salty or spiced snacks).

Mr Jain said unlike many other countries, cutlery has been one of the neglected segments of Indian food habits, which are mainly finger-centric. Only 15 per cent of the Rs 150-crore cutlery market in India is in the organised sector with less than half-a-dozen major players around to select quality cutlery from.

The organised market in India is set to increase to an estimated Rs 60 crore by 2010, 50 per cent of which FnS is eyeing with an increased investment in research and development being conducted in Mumbai, Delhi and Chhattisgarh.

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