Industry testimonial: “We believe shrimp farmers can make a profit if they use the best inputs in terms of seeds, feed and management“

Avanti Feeds Ltd – Satya Narayana Murthy Duppanapudi and Ranga Reddy Koppula

Avanti Feeds Ltd is a company founded in 2007 and distributes Lallemand solutions for shrimp farming in India.

Can you tell us a few words about Avanti Feeds?

Paresh Kumar Shetty, General Manager: “The company is 25 years old, and we primarily focus on the production of shrimp feeds. It is Avanti who introduced the black tiger prawns in India. Today we have 6 factories in India: 5 in the South, 1 on the west coast. We produce nearly 600 000 tons of shrimp feeds, and we sell in most provinces where prawns are produced, including 11 provinces of India. We hold 45% market share. In India, around 97% of the shrimp market is composed of Vannamei shrimp, which is growing, and only 3% of Black Tiger. In the past 5-6 years our sales have been rising by 20-30%. We focus on quality: our main objective is to produce quality shrimp feeds and provide good services to farmers for them to succeed. We have a sales team of around 250 people all around India. Nearly every year we are adding new facilities.”

How long have you been working with Lallemand Animal Nutrition’s products and which solutions do you distribute?

“Our collaboration started in 2010. We now have three products in our portfolio based on Lallemand solutions: Avant Pro W for water quality improvement, our best-selling product (it has become the leading product on the market today), Avant Bact (based on P. acidilactici and S. boulardii), to target gut health, Avant Immune to modulate the immunity during critical periods like low temperature season, transfer, etc.”

Why did you choose to work with Lallemand Animal Nutrition?/what do you like about your partnership with Lallemand?

Shrinibas Mohanty, DGM: “We are working with Lallemand because we believe they have the best quality, consistency and brand image. We believe shrimp farmers can make a profit if they use the best inputs in terms of seeds, feed, health products, and management. We aim to provide the best feed and best health products to our market and Lallemand’s products are a good fit. We have a team of advisers who support the farmers with technical service and implementing good practices.” 

Ranga Reddy Koppula, Product Manager: “Lallemand is one of the largest companies in the field of probiotics for animal nutrition, they have good R&D that can bring us new products. We really work as a team to help Indian shrimp farmers. We work together on the problems they are facing so that farmers can benefit from the collaboration. We introduce products, which are useful for the farmer. Our main focus and expertise is shrimp feed, and we use Lallemand technical expertise to train our teams, but also to educate farmers and offer technical support. Lallemand international experts visit us regularly, and we organize technical meetings with farmers and for our staff. We have quarterly training sessions for farmers. We have been working together very successfully over the past 6-7 years, even despite the shrimp market’s ups and downs.”