Man Who Began With Selling Fountain Soda, Has A Rs 650 Crore Empire: Who Is Vadilal Gandhi

In 1907, Vadilal Gandhi, a resident of Ahmedabad founded the eponymous brand. He started by selling soda and gradually added ice cream as well. It was this small but fast-growing business that Ranchod Lal Gandhi, Vadilal Gandhi's son, inherited.

The century-old company Vadilal, foundation of which was laid pre-independence era, has now taken off and made a buzz in the US market. He used to make ice creams from the handmade "Kothi" method, where ice creams were made by mixing sugar, salt, milk and ice in a traditional hand-operated machine.

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Today, the company offers their customers over 200 different flavours of ice cream made at their state-of-the-art manufacturing units and has outlets in over 49 countries.

But how did his humble beginnings became so huge? Here's how.

From soda to ice cream

It was under Ranchod Lal Gandhi¡¯s leadership that Vadilal started to focus more on ice creams. Vadilal opened its first ice cream outlet in 1926. In the same year for the very first time, an ice cream making machine was imported from Germany.

By the time of India¡¯s independence, the company had opened four outlets across the city. In the early ¡¯70s, when Ramchandra and Laxman Gandhi, sons of Ranchod Lal Gandhi, also joined the business, Vadilal had grown to 10 outlets in Ahmedabad.

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Their USP

A company that could always place its fingers on the pulse of the consumers, one of its USP¡¯s was that all their ice creams were 100 per cent vegetarian and were advertised as being fit for consumption even during religious fasting periods.

By the 1990s the fourth generation of the Gandhi family had joined the business. This included the three sons of Ramchandra Gandhi, Virendra, Rajesh and Shailesh Gandhi and Laxman Gandhi¡¯s son Devanshu Gandhi.

In 1990 the company was listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) under the name Vadilal Industries Ltd. In the same year, a split in the family resulted in two names getting listed on the BSE. Having clocked a revenue of Rs 650 cores in financial year 2019-20, the company continues to be positive of a larger revenue amount this financial year.

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The export business

It began to expand further due to the export business. When having a total of 500 distributors, 40,000 retailers, and 120 plus ice cream flavours wasn't enough, Vadilal went on a quest to become the biggest ice cream producer brand in the United States and has a strong global presence in around 40+ countries today, reported Economic Times. For the years 2020-21, the company had experienced an export surge of 250 cr.

Currently run by the fifth generation of the Vadilal family in Gujarat, the brand has enormous price ranges starting from as low as Rs 10 to Rs 700 to ensure no one feels left out to treat their tastebuds with Vadilal ice-creams.

Representational Image/istanbul.com

Vadilal today

¡°Today, Vadilal is the largest selling Indian ice cream brand in the US and our brand has reached 45 countries of the world,¡± Kalpit Gandhi, a fifth-generation entrepreneur of the family claims. He adds with pride that while conducting the business ethically is of great importance to the brand, they are equally conscious about the environment and working towards protecting it.