B Soundararajan: Their firm, Suguna Foods, works with 40000 farms from more than 15000 villages in 18 states.
B Soundararajan and GB Sundararajan are two of India's richest poultry farmers. The brothers started their poultry business in 1984 with a modest investment of Rs 5000. Their first poultry farm was in Udumalaipettai, about 72 km from Coimbatore. Nearly four decades later, they have created India's largest poultry business with an annual turnover of Rs 12000 crore.
Their firm, Suguna Foods, works with 40000 farmers from more than 15000 villages in 18 states. B Soundararajan is the chairman of the behemoth. His son Vignesh is the managing director of the firm.
Suguna Foods gets most of its revenue from the southern and eastern part of the country. It is a market leader in broiler chicken and eggs in the market.
Soundararajan began working after finishing school. He started by growing vegetables. After he couldn't make profit from the enterprise, he started working for an agriculture pump company in Hyderabad. He later returned to join his brother's business.
Their initial business was to sell chicken feed to farmers. They learnt from the farmers the challenges of growing chicken.
They then thought of hiring farmers for contract farming, a novel concept in India. They started this model with just three farmers in 1990.
B Soundararajan and GB Sundararajan provided farmers everything they needed to raise chickens. The farmers would then deliver them grown birds in return for money.
Over the next 7 years, 40 farmers joined them. Their turnover at that time reached Rs 7 crore. Suguna Chicken soon became a household name in Tamil Nadu.
The company later started to provide these farmers technical expertise to grow produce in a healthy way.
The farmers are paid for growing chickens.
The company also pays a minimum growing charge in case of poor performance. Farmers get a minimum growing charge every two months.
The farming business contributes to over 80 percent of their business. These products are sold to markets that sell meat and eggs. The company also produces animal feeds.
They managed to grow their business despite having no business background or education.
In FY 2021, their turnover was Rs 9,155.04 crore. In FY 2020, their turnover was Rs 8739 crore.
In FY 2021, their profit was Rs 358.89 crore.
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 "B Soundararajan: Suguna Foods gets most of its revenue from the southern and eastern part of the country. (File)")
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