Photo: Collected
Paras Dairy is expanding its Galacia cheese brand into West and South India, targeting the HoReCa sector with mozzarella variants produced at its Ahmednagar plant. The company aims to reach Rs 3,300 crore in revenue by FY26 through retail expansion, a strengthened HoReCa network, and strategic depot construction for a complex supply chain.
New Delhi: Paras Dairy (VRS Foods Limited) is betting big on its cheese portfolio, retail expansion, and HoReCa network to touch a revenue of Rs 3,300 crore in FY26, up from about Rs 2,700 crore in FY25.
The company is stepping up its consumer-facing portfolio with a cheese-led push, fresh capex, and a wider cold-chain backbone, even as institutional and export channels remain its core, said a company official in an interview with ETRetail.
The dairy major entered cheese in February-March 2025, starting in North India, and now has entered the West and South India market, the company said last week.
“The cheese range has been designed primarily for HoReCa and QSRs, which account for roughly 75 per cent of India’s cheese demand. Retail will follow in the next 4-6 months,” VPS Malik, chief marketing officer, VRS Foods, said in the interview.
“We already have close to 100 distributors in the west and south and plan to reach about 500 HoReCa distributors within a year,” he added.
According to the company, its Galacia cheese brand has expanded to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad, with a plan to grow from 500 to over 2,000 HoReCa outlets by March 2026 and add 100 distributors across West and South India.
“We started the cheese plant at Ahmednagar this year with an investment of about Rs 100 crore in cheese plus a few powder lines,” Malik said. “We will invest another Rs 20-30 crore over the next 6-8 months to scale the retail side of cheese and distribution.”
Paras is also building out depots to handle multi-temperature flows across ambient, chilled (+4°C), and frozen lines. “Supply chain is complex in dairy… owning depots is important. We have depots in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi, and plan to scale to about 15 depots over the next 12 months,” Malik said.
Channel mix and quick commerce push
Sharing Paras' channel strategy, Malik said cheese sales skew to modern trade and e-commerce more than other dairy categories. “Before e-commerce, cheese was ~70 per cent modern trade; now about 25-30 per cent is online,” he shared.
While talking about B2B quick commerce, he said, “We have started with HyperPure in Delhi and will scale to other cities.”
Exports steady; India remains core
For the company, exports remain opportunistic. Malik said, “We export select products to the US and butter largely to the Middle East and North Africa,” adding, “Exports are not even in double digits of revenue. The Indian market is more than 80 per cent for us, and consumption is growing. Butter exports will likely continue for the next six months, given global tightness.” See details.
Source: Email/GFMM
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