French firm Délifrance plans India entry in Dec

New Delhi: Délifrance, a premium French bakery and cafe chain with presence in 100 countries, will start operations in India starting December. Bahri Hospitality and Cuisines Pvt. Ltd, a new player in the hospitality industry, will facilitate its entry.

Bahri Hospitality will serve as the master franchise owner for the India business, and will set up 30 stores across three formats by 2028. Half these stores will be directly owned and operated by the company.

Bahri has invested nearly ₹9 crore on establishing a production facility, a base factory, and warehousing in Delhi. This facility will initially cater to the Delhi-NCR. In the development phase, the focus will be on expanding to other markets, starting with Hyderabad and Bengaluru, said Hemant Bahri, founder and managing director of Bahri group, which has interests in the real estate sector in south India.

The first store will open in Delhi’s Defence Colony in the coming weeks. The brand specializes in French breads, viennoiserie, savouries, and patisseries. With a 40-year history, it runs over 200 outlets globally under the Délifrance brand. “India is a nascent market for bakery products. In the long term, this format will be quite profitable. This is a premium chain and in India we will have three different formats, from a small takeaway to medium and large format operations. The capex will be at ₹40 lakh- ₹1.15 crore depending on the size,” Bahri told Mint.

Five of these stores will open in the NCR market before the end of this fiscal year 2024.

The company has factories in France, Europe, and Asia and also operates a unique international commercial network, where it services the top hotel chains around the world.

Fabrice Herlax, the company’s international marketing and concept strategy director, said that entering the Indian subcontinent was an interesting challenge. But we have the ability to connect and adapt to the local tastes and flavours. We will also have tailor-made training programmes for Indians with the backing of our bakery school in Paris,” he said.

This is the company's second entry into India. It first came to India in 2016 and opened only one outlet in Gurugram's DLF Cyberhub. But it folded up operations soon after within a year.

Alongside the parent company Grands Moulins de Paris, founded in 1919 in Paris, Délifrance SA is owned by a French farmers agro-industrial cooperative VIVESCIA which has 11,000 farmers as shareholders.

The company will compete with premium operators such as Paul and other organized chains such as Suchali’s.