The Wafer Sultan - Mr. Chandubhai Virani

They came to town three decades ago to run a canteen in a cinema hall on contract, saw the immense potential for the fare they introduced and went on to conquer the wafers market in the state.

This is the summary of the success story of Chandubhai Virani and his brothers Meghajibhai, Bhikhubhai and kanubhai, whose Balaji wafers has a 90% share of the wafers market in the state.

They come to Rajkot from Jamnagar district in 1982 with the dream of building up a successful business and took the canteen at the Astron cinema on contract.

Chandubhai Virani, now the managing director of Balaji Wafers, with a touch of nostalgia remembers those days when the family sold roasted groundnuts, sandwiches, and potato wafers to the cine- gores. “Right from those days, we believed in reasonable pricing & good quality. This earned good turnover, through the profits where a little lower. This policy also won us many loyal customers. We always received feedback from our customers about the quality of the stuff and stuck to the highest standards of quality,” Chandubhai says, during when I spend free time with him.

As a demand increase, they stopped buying wafers from out and started making it. They sold the wafers to the around the theatre also. This was the first step in setting up their business. They had two helpers to assist in wafer production.

Chandubhai opened an independent retail outlet in 1983-84 to sell wafers and sandwich brand named it Balaji Sandwich, which is successes outlet. Balaji wafers now produces 9000 kg of banana and potato wafers and 7000 kg of other salted and fried items (making) a day.

Chandubhai says quality is his primary concern which gets priority over taking on the multi-national brands. Balaji wafers in stalled a semi- automatic plant in 993-94. The plant had capacity to make 180 kg of wafers a day. When they started, their business, they made just 60 kg of wafers a day, that too without the help of machines. They had a keen competition in the market. They did not want to lose out on production and compromise on quality. That is why they opted a semi-automatic plnt. It helped them improve production and enhance the quality. At that time production division was under the supervision of Chandubhai, while Bhikhubhai and kanubhai looked after sales and marketing.

After conducting a research to find out how companies abroad stored the wafers fresh they installed a modern automatic plant in 2000. The unit has a capacity to produce 450 kg of wafers an hours and packing in the latest technology bags. Balaji make turnover of Rs 4 crore.

The fame of taste reached to the whole Gujarat hence it was time to takeover the whole Gujarat so the biggest automatic plant of Gujarat came into picture in 2003. Now production capacity was increase by three times. Today, production capacity is to produce 1250 kg of wafer an hours and packing in the latest technology bags. Today, You can have Balaji snacks in every 100 meters in Gujarat.

Quenching the demand of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan region Balaji group is now looking forward to march over India.