Balaji Wafers Success Story: Snack-Food Manufacturers

Balaji Wafers Success Story: We all like Lays, but after opening the packet of Lays, we do not understand whether we have bought chips or air.

Perhaps this is the reason why the popularity of Lays is slowly decreasing and other wafer-making companies like Uncle chips are taking its place in the market.

All these are foreign companies. But today we will talk about a brand new Indian company, which is competing with Lays. I am writing about Balaji wafers. So let’s see how Balaji is competing with the lays.

Balaji Wafers started when Chandubhai Virani, the younger son of the Virani family, who was just 15 years old at that time, went to Rajkot with his brothers after a scam and loss in business and started selling sandwiches at the Astron cinema hall. began.

But apart from this, he also used to do work like pasting posters and cleaning there. For which he used to get 90 rupees every month.

But the problem in selling sandwiches was that the bread used to spoil quickly. And for this Chandubhai thought of a new idea. He replaced the sandwich with potato wafers.

Initially, he used to take wafers from a supplier. But it is said that “necessity is the mother of invention”. The man from whom Chandu Bhai used to take chips used to come late and deliver broken chips.

To deal with this, Chandu Bhai himself decided to make and sell chips. He fried and sold chips himself by using a normal cart.

Chandu Bhai’s hard work paid off. People started liking his chips. And soon they started running two more canteens. Apart from this, he also started supplying chips to 25-30 merchants.

Gradually his business grew in Rajkot. And finally, in 1982, he finalized the name Balaji for his business.

As Chandu Bhai’s business was growing, he realized that it is not possible to maintain the same taste in every slot while making chips by hand. And so he decided to get a machine for making chips. But the machine was very expensive, so Chandubhai applied his Indian jugadu mind here.

And by taking different parts of the machine, they themselves joined together and made the machine. By the way, let us tell you that Chandubhai did not have any engineering degree. By 1989, he made it the largest wafer-making facility in Gujarat.

After this he took a loan of 50 lakhs from the bank and finally in 1992 Balaji was established.

Balaji competed with wafer-making companies like Uncle chips, and Simba which were based in the market at that time and gradually started becoming popular. But no comeback without setbacks. The same happened with Balaji.

When Lays filed a case against Balaji

Lays said that Balaji is copying his design. Although Chandubhai said, Lays is suing him because his business is growing rapidly. But this argument was of no use. The verdict came against Chandubhai and Balaji had to change its packaging.

People were feeling that now people will forget Balaji. But Balaji has proved that he has made his place in the market on the basis of the taste and quality of his product.

Balaji is growing rapidly by 20 to 25 percent every year. Whereas the shares of lays have come down from 51% to 49%. The biggest reason behind this is, Balaji understood the Indian taste. Balaji knows that the taste of people changes at every step in India.

Accordingly, he served wafers with the flavor of authentic taste in different states. Like chaat masala-based snacks in Maharashtra and Spicy snacks in Rajasthan. While the flavor of Lays is more according to the Indian market and less according to the foreign taste. Now Balaji has also entered the noodles market. Let’s see which already popular foreign brands are going to leave the noodles market.

By the way, which is your favorite wafer, Lays or Balaji, tell by commenting.