Baby Marine Seafood to venture outside Kerala

Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 5: Seafood company Baby Marine Group (BMG) said on Friday it has posted a turnover of Rs 4 crore since starting home delivery in Kerala and will be launching an outlet in Bangalore in October.

"For five decades we were only serving the export markets. It was only in February we started to tap the domestic market for the first time at Kochi and we have already completed a turnover of Rs 4 crore," Alex K. Thomas, Managing Director of Baby Marine Seafood Retail Pvt Ltd, the group's domestic arm, told reporters here.

The Kochi-headquartered company has also launched home delivery of fish and other sea food in state capital Thiruvananthapuram. The buyers can either place online orders at www.dailyfish.in or by downloading the Daily Fish India app.

In a span of six months, the company already has 10,000 online customers in Kochi alone, Thomas said, noting that the household fish market in Kerala is worth Rs 12,000 crore.

He said the company would open its first outlet outside Kerala in Bengaluru in October and follow it up with more outlets in South India before moving north.

The company has proven its mettle by serving the US and European markets for nearly five decades, but still has to get used to the peculiarities of the domestic market, Thomas said.

"Here, we have to dispel the perception that frozen fish is inferior to fresh fish, which it is not. We use one of the best freezing technologies available in the world. Moreover, we can offer seafood at cheaper rates than what's available in the open market," he said.

At 24 kg a year, Kerala has the highest per capita consumption of fish in India.

Baby Marine offers to home-deliver a kg of cleaned and ready to cook seer fish for Rs 760 and a 250 gram of cleaned shrimp for Rs 190.

Also available are white pomfret, red snapper, pearl spot, mackerel, squids, anchovy, crabs and lobsters.

IANS