Mishtann Foods began as a family trading desk in Gujarat, buying and selling Basmati rice for the domestic market, and has spent three decades turning that commodity flow into a branded foods business that now reaches kitchens from Indian restaurants to Middle Eastern supermarkets. The company’s recurring approach is to take a staple grain, run it through a single highly automated plant that handles everything from cleaning to packaging under one roof, and then sell it both in bulk and under its own brand names - a model it is now extending from rice into salt, wheat, pulses, and eventually grain-based ethanol.
Business segments
Two engines at different stages - a branded rice and staples platform that generates today’s cash, and a grain-based ethanol plant under construction that bets on India’s biofuel mandate - both anchored to the same sourcing geography and processing logic.
1. Branded rice and staples: the kitchen-platform engine
A single automated plant in Gujarat turns paddy into packaged Basmati rice sold under six brand names, while salt, wheat and pulses are bought from third parties and distributed through the same retail network - one pipeline, many staples.
- One plant, end-to-end - the Himatnagar facility in Sabarkantha district processes Basmati rice at 45 metric tonnes per hour using Bühler machinery (sorters, graders, polishers, micro-cameras and silos) that combines cleaning, milling, sorting and packaging in a single automated line, so grain enters as paddy and leaves in branded packs without intermediate transport or human handling.
- Six brands for different tables - raw Basmati sells as ‘Pristino’ and ‘Snowflake’, sella (parboiled) as ‘Mahabat’ and ‘Shahryar’, and steam as ‘Jacinth’ and ‘Jasper’, covering economical to premium price points while unbranded whole and broken rice serve bulk buyers.
- Sourced from the grain belt, paid for by banks - roughly 80-85% of procurement is financed at concessional bank rates under a cash-and-carry model, with grain bought from mandis across Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, plus direct contract farming with about 150 farmers in Rajasthan who grow exclusively for the company.
- Salt, wheat and pulses ride the same network - the company does not manufacture salt or pulses; it buys finished goods from third-party producers, puts them in its own packs (500 g and 1 kg for salt), and pushes them through the same super-stockist and retailer chain that sells its rice, reaching over 100,000 retailers across 10 Indian states.
- Export reach through a UAE subsidiary - the wholly-owned subsidiary Grow and Grub Nutrients FZ-LLC, incorporated in 2023, imports Thai and Jasmine rice and drives sales into Middle Eastern and African markets, giving the company a direct international trading arm beyond its Indian manufacturing base.
2. Grain-based ethanol: the green-fuel bet under construction
A 1,000 kilolitre-per-day ethanol plant is being built in Gujarat to convert grain into biofuel and animal feed, backed by a state government agreement and designed to draw feedstock from the same farming belt that supplies the rice business.
- Built at refinery scale - the facility is designed for 1,000 KLPD of ethanol output at an estimated project cost of Rs 2,250 crore, and is expected to generate annual revenue of approximately Rs 3,500 crore once running.
- Feedstock from the neighbourhood - the plant will source all kinds of grains directly from roughly 25,000 farmers, local APMC yards and suppliers outside Gujarat, using waste and leftover agro-commodities as raw material and producing protein-rich animal feed as a by-product.
- Employment anchor for the district - the project is expected to create direct employment for around 1,000 and indirectly provide employment to nearly 5,000 individuals, with benefits flowing to more than 30,000 residents in Sabarkantha.
Group structure and partners
A lean listed parent with two overseas subsidiaries - one active in Dubai driving international trade, the other in Singapore being wound down - and a six-member board led by the founding family.
- Mishtann Foods Ltd is listed on the BSE and the Metropolitan Stock Exchange, operating from its registered office in Ahmedabad.
- Grow and Grub Nutrients FZ-LLC in the UAE is the active international arm, wholly owned and focused on trading rice into Africa and the Middle East.
- Grow & More Nutrifoods PTE. LTD. in Singapore was incorporated in late 2023 but had not commenced operations and was being wound up as of FY25.
- The Board has six directors - two executive, one non-executive non-independent, and three independent including one woman director - with the Managing Director and Whole-Time Director/CFO drawn from the Patel family.