Sayaji Industries is a maize wet miller that has spent eight decades turning a single agricultural commodity into an expanding catalogue of industrial ingredients - starches, sweeteners, and now spray-dried food powders and natural emulsifiers - for the factories that make everything from IV fluids and toothpaste to packaged snacks and cola. Founded in 1941 with a one-tonne-per-day crushing unit serving Ahmedabad’s textile mills, the company was reshaped after the Priyam Bipin Mehta family took control in 1982 and has since pursued a deliberate “pivot to Speciality Food Ingredients” from 2016 onward. The recurring approach is niche product expansion through culturally aligned global partners - both of its French joint-venture partners are family-run businesses entering their first global JV, mirroring Sayaji’s own promoter-family ethos - while using the cash flows of the core starch business to fund each new layer of value addition.
Business segments
Four engines at different stages - a maize-processing cash cow, a seeds business with its own distribution muscle, a spray-dried food-ingredients platform, and two French joint ventures that turn the company’s own dextrose into high-value natural additives - each built on the customer relationships and cash flows of the one before.
1. Maize starch and derivatives: the integrated mill that funds everything else
A single 1,000-tonne-per-day wet-milling complex in Ahmedabad crushes maize into starches, sweeteners and by-products, selling to over 40 countries with captive power that cuts electricity costs by more than half.
- One site, many products - the Kathwada plant runs a continuous wet-milling process where maize is steeped for 50 hours, separated into germ, fibre, protein and starch slurry, and then routed into native starches, modified starches, liquid glucose, high-maltose corn syrup, dextrose monohydrate, dextrose anhydrous (including India’s first injectable grade for IV solutions), and sorbitol. By-products - gluten meal, fibre, corn steep liquor and maize germ - are sold into cattle feed, poultry, pet food and pharma fermentation, historically making up roughly a quarter of sales value.
- Captive power is the margin lever - on-site steam turbines, a gas engine and a 4.5 MW solar plant together meet 86% of total power needs and deliver over 50% cost savings versus grid electricity, with a further 6.6 MW solar project contracted. Methane captured from effluent treatment also feeds a biogas engine, so waste treatment doubles as low-cost energy production.
- The product mix is shifting upward - the share of higher-margin dextrose and sorbitol in net sales rose from 32% to 37% between FY19 and FY21, while lower-margin liquid glucose and native starch declined, a deliberate move to improve margins. Downstream capacities reflect this tilt: sorbitol at 150 tonnes per day is the largest single line, followed by native starch at 250 and modified starch at 100 tonnes per day.
- Customers are industrial, concentrated and sticky - the top 10 buyers, including Colgate Palmolive, Hindustan Unilever, FDC, Zydus Wellness and Arvind, form around 30% of operating income, and the company has tied up with Colgate to supply the closest factories rather than shipping across the country. End-use sectors such as pharma and FMCG demand quality standards where trust and track record create high entry barriers, because the approval process for new suppliers takes a substantially long period.
- Raw-material geography cuts both ways - the plant sits far from maize-growing areas, raising inbound logistics costs, but its Ahmedabad location puts it close to end-user industries, and the company imports non-GM maize when domestic prices spike due to monsoons, minimum support prices or competing ethanol demand.
2. Sayaji Seeds: a 64%-owned hybrid-seeds business with its own farm-gate network
A nine-year-old subsidiary that researches, produces and sells over 40 seed varieties across 12 crops through more than 1,100 distributors and 20,000 retailers in nine Indian states.
- Bred in-house, sold at the field - a 45-acre R&D farm in Gujarat with four scientists, six junior breeders, biotech and pathology labs, and the Phenome digital platform from Israel develops hybrids of maize, castor, pearl millet, paddy, cotton, mustard, wheat, groundnut and vegetables. The go-to-market engine is a 75-plus-member sales team supported by field days and crop demonstrations, reaching farmers through over 1,100 distributors and more than 20,000 retailers.
- A separate business, not a captive supplier - although maize is a crop in the seeds portfolio, the subsidiary operates independently, selling to farmers in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, with Punjab recently added and Karnataka planned. It also exports to neighbouring countries.
- The stake was deliberately reduced - Sayaji Industries held 96.31% of the entity (then an LLP) as of March 2021, but diluted to 64% in June 2022 when promoter-group members enhanced their capital contributions, and the entity was converted into a private limited company in January 2026.
3. Speciality food ingredients: spray-dried powders and French JV products sold to the same FMCG buyers
Three distinct capabilities - an in-house spray-drying plant, a gum-arabic joint venture with a six-generation French family firm, and a caramel-colours JV under construction - that together generated about ₹102 crore in revenue in FY26, with basket-selling across a shared customer base.
- Spray-dried fruit and vegetable powders - a dedicated facility at Kathwada, built for roughly ₹25 crore and running since January 2022, uses two imported commercial spray dryers and indigenous technology to turn tomato, tamarind, lime, beetroot, orange and mango into powders for seasoning, soups, ready-to-eat curries and masalas. Annual capacity is 1,680 tonnes, and utilisation in FY26 was 71%.
- Gum Arabic via Alland & Sayaji - the 50:50 JV with Alland & Robert (founded 1884 in Normandy) makes spray-dried gum arabic powder, a natural emulsifier for sodas, confectionery and flavour houses, using the French partner’s proprietary technology. It is described as one of the largest manufacturers of gum acacia powder worldwide, and in FY26 it delivered revenue of ₹66.7 crore and EBITDA of ₹15.1 crore.
- Caramel colours via Nigay & Sayaji - a 50:50 JV with Nigay SAS (founded 1855, a fifth-generation family business and global leader in caramel) will manufacture liquid and powder caramel colours for cola beverages, IMFL and soy sauce, with the plant expected by end of calendar 2027. The JV is vertically integrated: Sayaji’s own dextrose monohydrate syrup will be the feedstock, protecting margins and ensuring raw-material reliability.
- One customer, many products - leading FMCG and food-and-beverage players buy starch, dextrose, sorbitol, gum arabic and caramel colours, so the speciality portfolio enables basket-selling and cross-selling across the entire range. Both JVs are structured to be capital-efficient, with minimal cash outflow from Sayaji.
Group structure and partners
The Mehta family holds 75% of the listed flagship, which in turn controls a seeds subsidiary, a UAE sales office, a dormant agri entity, and two 50:50 French joint ventures - all while monetising idle land to improve liquidity.
- Promoter control with a long tail of entities - the promoters own 75% of Sayaji Industries Limited, listed on the BSE, and have set up other businesses outside the listed company, including NB Commercial Enterprises Limited, which makes HDPE barrels for chemical, food and pharma industries in Gujarat.
- Idle land is being turned into cash - the company sold idle land at Kalol, Gandhinagar district, in two transactions in August 2024 for a combined ₹24.54 crore to unrelated third parties, and is in the process of selling remaining idle land at the same village, while also considering the sale of idle land at Kathwada to improve liquidity.