If you have ever used a desert air cooler padded with fragrant vetiver or sat on a balcony shaded by a vetiver screen sprinkled with water, you will recognise its unmistakable earthy scent. Perfumers noticed it decades ago and transformed the essential oil derived from the roots of this humble grass into one of perfumery’s most prized base notes, featuring in an estimated 90% of luxury men’s perfumes.
Although vetiver is native to India and derives its name from the Tamil word vettiveru, meaning “cut root”, it is the Haitian variety that has long dominated the global perfume industry. About half the world’s vetiver oil originates in the Caribbean nation, where the grass was introduced by the French only in the 18th century.
That is changing. On 600 acres of arid and otherwise uncultivable sandy soil hugging the southeastern coast of India, particularly in Tamil Nadu, a specially cultivated variety of vetiver is now grown. The essential oil extracted from the roots of these plants has made its way into luxury perfumes, including American fashion designer Marc Jacobs’ Daisy Murakami Eau de Parfum.
At the heart of that journey is a natural ingredients company headquartered in the small town of Kolenchery, about 25 km from Kochi, Kerala. Synthite Industries works closely with contract farmers to cultivate the grass and harvest its roots and then extracts the fragrant oil before it travels to Swiss flavours and fragrances giant Givaudan’s laboratories, where it becomes, Vetiver des Sables India Orpur, which in turn becomes part of perfumes sold around the world.
The vetiver project is just one example of the role Synthite plays in the global natural ingredients supply chain.
Synthite, founded in 1972, is the world’s largest producer of spice oleoresins, controlling approximately 30% of the global market. Its customers include some of the world’s largest flavour, fragrance and food ingredient companies, including Swiss giants Givaudan and dsm-firmenich, Ireland’s Kerry Group, New York-listed International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), as well as food and consumer goods companies such as Tata Consumer Products, ITC Ltd, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, and PepsiCo.
The same company that helps create a premium fragrance ingredient for one of the world’s largest perfume houses also formulated the seasoning that gives Kurkure its distinctive taste and the masala sachet inside every packet of YiPPee! Noodles. It also owns masala and ready-to-cook brand Kitchen Treasures, premium bean-to-bar chocolate brand Paul & Mike and gourmet ingredients and specialty foods brand Sprig.
In 2025-26, Synthite hit a critical milestone: $500 million in revenue.
Yet, despite building one of India’s most successful ingredient manufacturing companies, Synthite finds itself at an inflection point. “The first $500 million took us 54 years. We want to make the next $500 million by around 2030,” says Aju Jacob, managing director of Synthite. “But that journey will be very different. That’s what we are working towards now.”
The company is in the midst of the biggest transformation since it was founded. It wants to expand beyond commodity spice extracts into higher-value natural solutions, expand its global footprint to be closer to both raw materials and customers, make strategic acquisitions, and restructure the organization to set it up for its next phase of growth.
Jacob, the younger son of Synthite founder C.V. Jacob, is in a hurry to get all this done, for two reasons. He plans to retire at 65, a little over three years from now, and he wants to take Synthite public before then.
Spice capital
To understand the need for this transformation we need to first understand the industry that made Synthite what it is today. For centuries, the world came to Kerala for its spices. Romans, Arabs, and later European colonial powers all sailed to the Malabar Coast in search of pepper, cardamom and other prized spices.
“Today people still come to Kerala for spices, but in a different form,” says Dr. K. Anees, principal scientist at the Indian Institute of Spices Research. Instead of sacks of pepper, global flavour and fragrance companies source oleoresins. “India is a pioneer in extraction technology. The breakthrough came with the two-stage extraction.”
Oleoresins are concentrated extracts containing both the volatile oils responsible for aroma and the non-volatile compounds that deliver flavour, pungency and colour. After the extraction, the two sets of compounds are blended back in different proportions, depending on a customer’s requirements.
Unlike ground spices, which vary from one harvest to another, oleoresins provide manufacturers with consistency and control over flavour, aroma, colour and pungency, so products such as noodle seasoning or chips taste identical across millions of packs.
Kerala became the global capital of spice extraction because it combined raw material availability, a major port in Kochi, and deep scientific expertise around spices, says Anees. “Over time, companies invested in extraction technologies and application knowledge, creating an ecosystem that was difficult to replicate elsewhere.”
Three companies headquartered in and around Kochi—Synthite, Plant Lipids and Mane Kancor—account for an estimated 65–70% of the global spice extraction industry.
But spice oleoresins are only one part of a much larger global natural ingredients supply chain.
Beyond oleoresins
“While Synthite holds a leadership position in oleoresins, the scope for future growth is only incremental. The larger growth opportunities lie in adjacent categories such as natural colours, nutraceutical ingredients, botanical extracts and actives,” says Shashi Kant Singh, partner and agri transformation specialist at PwC India.
This is a worldview Synthite has already embraced. “We will continue to grow spice oleoresins. That business built this company and it will remain our foundation,” says Jacob. “But if we want to become a billion-dollar company, we cannot get there by simply selling more oleoresins. We want to become a natural solutions company. Our strength has always been natural ingredient isolation and extraction. The larger opportunities lie in applying those capabilities to create much-higher-value natural solutions.”
Around 80% of Synthite’s revenue still comes from its extracts business, with five products—black pepper, paprika, capsicum, turmeric and ginger—accounting for 60%. While they provide scale, they have become increasingly commoditized. The rest of the portfolio, spanning products such as coffee extracts, vanilla, mustard essential oil, fragrance ingredients and natural colours, contributes a smaller share of revenue but punches above its weight when it comes to profits.
“As a thumb rule, if our overall EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) is around 13–14%, about half comes from the mainstream extracts business and the other half comes from the specialized, differentiated portfolio,” says Jacob.
Put simply, Synthite no longer wants to be paid merely for extracting molecules. It wants to be paid for solving customer problems with them.
The strategy is already visible across the portfolio. As regulators, particularly in the US, push manufacturers towards natural colours, Synthite is extending extracts it already produces from turmeric, paprika, spirulina, chlorophyll and marigold into colour solutions. Alongside natural vanilla extracts, it now manufactures bio-based vanillin from ferulic acid using microorganisms, allowing it to create more natural, cost-effective vanilla solutions than using natural vanilla extract alone. It is also working with a Canadian partner to develop natural pesticides using mustard essential oil.
The clearest proof that the strategy can work already exists within Synthite. Seven years ago, its perfumery ingredients business generated annual revenue of just around ₹7 crore. Last year, it crossed ₹120 crore. “The only reason for this growth was focus,” says Jacob. “We identified it as a strategic area, built a dedicated team around it and kept investing.”
Colin Gillie, former director of global sourcing at Kerry, says this willingness to move into technically demanding niches has consistently kept Synthite ahead of the market. “The company has never been content with simply supplying standard ingredients,” says Gillie. “It has consistently invested in new technologies, new applications and new categories ahead of where the market was moving. That’s one of the reasons customers continue to see it as a long-term innovation partner rather than just another supplier.”
Can Synthite pull it off?
The opportunity is clear. The harder question is whether Synthite can keep reinventing itself fast enough to capture it.
“There is a clear distinction between supplying raw extract and delivering a functional ingredient system,” says PwC India’s Singh. “For example, moving from turmeric extract to a stable yellow colour system or from chilli oleoresin to a customized heat profile for a food application—this transition to solution-based offering represents the next strategic leap for category leaders.”
Synthite clearly wants to be more than just an extracts supplier and become a more valuable application-led ingredients and solutions partner to clients. The trouble is it will be playing catch-up in many areas. Each of the new categories that Synthite is expanding into, including natural colours, speciality actives and perfumery ingredients, is dominated by companies that have spent decades building expertise.
The natural colours market, estimated to exceed $2 billion globally, is ruled by names such as Denmark’s Oterra, the world’s largest dedicated natural colours company, Netherlands-based GNT Group, known for its EXBERRY colouring foods, US-based Sensient Technologies, and Germany’s Döhler Group.
In nutraceutical ingredients and speciality actives, US-based Kemin Industries, Italy’s Indena and Indian-origin Sabinsa have built proprietary ingredient platforms supported by clinical research, intellectual property and formulation expertise.
In perfumery ingredients, Synthite will compete with specialist producers such as France’s Robertet, Biolandes and Payan Bertrand, companies that have built decades of expertise supplying natural aromatic ingredients to the world’s leading perfume houses.
- 1972 | The year Synthite was founded, in Kolenchery, Kerala. Today, it is the world’s largest producer of spice oleoresins, controlling around 30% of the global market.
- $500 million | Synthite’s revenue during the last fiscal year. Aside from the oleoresins business, it also owns food brands such as Kitchen Treasures, Paul & Mike, and Sprig.
- ~80% | Share of the extracts business in Synthite’s total revenue. Of that, five products—black pepper, paprika, capsicum, turmeric and ginger—account for 60%.
Indeed, some companies in the science-led speciality ingredients space are far ahead of Synthite. Take for instance, Kemin Industries, a company that Jacob wants to emulate. Both companies built expertise extracting bioactive compounds from plants, but Kemin invested much earlier in turning those molecules into clinically validated, application-led specialty ingredient platforms. While Synthite focused on extracting the active molecule, Kemin invested in turning those molecules into proprietary ingredient platforms.
Today, Kemin generates annual revenue of around $1.4 billion, according to ZoomInfo, with much of its portfolio built around proprietary specialty ingredients rather than commodity extracts. One example is lutein, a carotenoid or natural pigment extracted from marigold flowers. Synthite manufactures lutein extract from marigold and supplies it as an ingredient. Kemin invested heavily in application science, clinical studies, formulation, regulatory approvals and intellectual property to create FloraGLO Lutein, one of the world’s best-known branded ingredients for eye health.
“The extraction business has reached a level of maturity. The next phase of value creation will come from application science; developing ingredients that are stable during processing and delivering specific functional benefits in food, nutraceutical and personal care applications,” says PwC India’s Singh. “Customer demand is shifting from mere replacement of synthetics to performance driven natural solutions.”
Jacob admits that Synthite missed out on capitalising on its expertise in extraction science sooner to create proprietary ingredient systems and solutions. “We had not proactively done exploratory research. But now we feel the need to do that. We are revamping that entire segment to become much more exploratory, and it is a top priority,” he says. Yet Jacob believes Synthite has one important advantage. “We are not starting from zero. Technologically, we are already halfway there.”
In an industry with significant global linkages disruption can come from anywhere. Paprika is an example of how quickly a competitive advantage can disappear in the ingredients business. In the late 1990s, rising prices of Spanish paprika created an opportunity for Indian companies. A sweet variety of Karnataka’s Byadgi chilli emerged as a viable alternative, helping India build a globally competitive paprika extraction business. But China soon developed its own sweet paprika varieties, scaled up cultivation massively and began dominating the markets.
“By 2011-12, the Indian paprika industry as we knew it had disappeared,” says Jacob, explaining why Synthite eventually established its own manufacturing operations in China for paprika extraction.
Jacob believes the reinvention requires changing the organization as much as the product portfolio. Businesses such as perfumery, which has crossed ₹100 crore in revenue, are being run as dedicated business segments with their own leadership teams rather than as part of a single integrated organization. “The challenge is to retain the advantages of being one company while allowing each business to move at its own speed,” he says.
That philosophy also explains why Jacob is open to hiving off non-core consumer brands such as Kitchen Treasures, Paul and Mike, and Sprig, over time. “That’s at least three years away,” he says. Paul and Mike, Sprig and neutraceuticals brand NatXtra together form Zenriva, Synthite’s suite of premium consumer products. While Kitchen Treasures is a ₹330-crore business, Zenriva does about ₹30–35 crore today. “The team is confident of taking it to around ₹70–80 crore. Once it reaches that scale, we will decide the next step.”
Eye on India
While its growth is primarily led by exports, Synthite’s India-focused business-to-business segment is set to play a more prominent role.
India’s processed food market is projected to almost double from about $300 billion in 2023 to nearly $600 billion by 2030, according to a joint FICCI and Deloitte study released earlier this month. That is creating demand for companies that can help food manufacturers develop products rather than simply supply ingredients.
Through Symega Food Ingredients, Synthite intends to be that company. Synthite launched Symega in 2006 to offer seasonings, flavours, sauces, natural colours and customised ingredient systems for packaged food companies, quick-service restaurants and food service businesses in the domestic market.
Globally, it is these types of solutions that Synthite’s clients such as Givaudan, Kerry, dsm-firmenich and IFF offer. “In India, we compete with them through Symega. Globally, we don’t. And that’s how we want to retain it,” says Jacob, adding that the company could expand Symega to Africa.
Symega gives Synthite something ingredient companies rarely possess: a deep understanding of how customers build finished foods. Its chicken tikka flavour bases, for instance, are used as top notes in food products or seasonings, while one coffee manufacturer sprays Synthite’s CO₂ extract into packets just before sealing so consumers get an instant hit of the aroma as soon as they open the packet. Those insights flow back into Synthite, helping it develop specialized natural building blocks that can later be supplied to global flavour houses.
“The conversation has shifted from simply buying ingredients to jointly solving problems,” says Biju Joseph, director of procurement for India, Middle East and Africa at dsm-firmenich. “Customers are looking for partners with strong scientific capabilities who understand applications, can innovate with them and can respond quickly to changing consumer preferences.”
Beyond Kerala
The transformation is also changing where Synthite wants to manufacture. For much of its history, the company’s international strategy was straightforward. Source raw materials primarily in India and where needed from around the world, but process them in India and export finished ingredients to global customers.
That model is beginning to change. “There are two reasons to expand outside India,” says Jacob. “One is when you need to be closer to the raw material because certain botanicals and fresh crops lose value rapidly after harvest, making local extraction both technically and economically more attractive. The second is to be closer to the customer.”
Synthite’s earliest overseas manufacturing investment was in China, initially to process paprika sourced locally. Over time, that operation evolved to process chillies and ginger there, and has carried out extraction trials on rosemary, taking advantage of China’s position as a major producer of several botanicals. Jacob says the experience demonstrated that once a manufacturing base is established close to the source of raw materials, it can become a platform for multiple products rather than a single commodity.
The company has also begun expanding its sourcing footprint. In Rwanda, Synthite is working with farmers to cultivate crops such as marigold, rosemary and turmeric. Around a quarter of the company’s marigold requirement now comes from Africa. It also operates a licensed cannabis extraction business in Canada serving that country’s regulated medical and recreational markets.
Synthite is now set to expand to other locations, including South America, where it already has a presence in Brazil, and Indonesia. Jacob says he would like global centres to account for at least 25–30% of Synthite’s manufacturing.
The company is also evaluating application and experience centres in global markets so customers can see some of its innovative products firsthand.
Jacob’s ambition is that, in the decades ahead, Synthite will not merely supply natural ingredients to the world but will be one of the companies shaping the future of the global natural solutions industry.
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