Home grown private equity fund Everstone Capital has sold its iconic bread brand Modern Foods to Mexico’s largest food and bakery company, Grupo Bimbo.
Everstone’s bread and bakery platform Everfoods Asia predominantly consists of Modern Bread brand that Everstone had acquired from Hindustan Unilever in 2016. It also includes other brands such as Cookie Man.
ET first reported on 8 September about the potential deal between Everstone and Grupo Bimbo.
Grupo Bimbo is the largest baking company in the world, operating in 33 countries, including India, and has a diversified portfolio of over 13,000 products and more than 100 renowned brands.
Its popular brands include Entenmann’s, Bimbo, Tia Rosa, Marinela, Barcel, Sara Lee, Oroweat and Arnold Bread. At present, Grupo Bimbo sells bakery brand Harvest Gold in India, which was acquired in 2017 as part of its India entry.
With a revenue of Rs.400 crore, Modern bread holds about 35-40% market share in Indian bread market.
Modern Foods competes with other bakery brands such as Britannia, Harvest Gold, Nature’s Own and English Oven.
Modern Foods operates through a distribution network which covers 80,000 plus retailers across the country.
Last year, Modern Foods had acquired National Capital Region -based Supreme Baker India, which sells Citi Fresh and Topsim Food brands. In 2018, Modern Food had acquired Chennai based Australian Foods India, which sells fresh baked cookies under the Cookie Man brand.
The Bakery industry in India, under the major categories of bread, biscuits, and cakes & pastries, is valued at $8 billion. The industry is growing at an average rate of 10 per cent since 2015. There are about 2,000 organised bakeries and more than 10 lakh unorganised small-scale bakeries operating in India.
Besides Everfoods, Everstone also owns F&B Asia Ventures Ltd, a pan-Asian platform in the food and beverage space. It owns and operates leading brands such as Burger King (India and Indonesia) and Domino’s (Indonesia), Masala Library, Farzi Café, Pa Pa Ya, Masala Bar, Harry’s, Pind Balluchi, and Duck & Rice.
Founded in 2006 by former Goldman Sachs bankers Sameer Sain and Atul Kapur, Everstone Capital currently manages $4 billion of assets under management.
