Why we are building in soy protein

Zippy makes specialty pasta and vermicelli at Jaspur for other brands, and that carries on. This note is about the other plant, at Rudrapur, where we make soya chaap and other high-moisture soy protein. I have led that project since it began in 2022. These are the reasons we keep putting effort into it.

Indian food companies are adding protein everywhere: Amul sells about two dozen high-protein products, McDonald's India added a protein slice, and Swiggy Instamart reports protein orders up 150% in two years. Gram for gram of protein, at November 2026 wholesale prices, our plain chaap rolls cost a buyer less than half as much as paneer or chicken breast.

Sources: Amul; Westlife Foodworld; ETV Bharat

Soya chaap is eaten every day across North India, from street stalls to restaurant chains, and it is largely unbranded. The 2025 Ipsos report for the Plant Based Foods Industry Association leaves it out: it sized India's plant-based food market at about ₹300 crore and excluded soya chaap and soya chunks. For a sense of the wider soy-protein category, Patanjali's Nutrela alone sold 27,710 tonnes of soya chunks in FY24 (₹598.5 crore). Paneer is at a similar stage: packaged brands are still a small share of sales. Much chaap is made by small local units and sold loose, and the brands building it need makers who can hold a spec.

Sources: Ipsos for PBFIA, 2025; Milky Mist DRHP, 2025; Patanjali Foods annual report, FY24

In the US, plant-based meat is priced well above the meat it copies: shelf prices ran about 76% above conventional meat per pound in 2025, and sales fell 10%. Chaap has to sell below chicken and paneer and still be soft, juicy and quick to cook. So we engineer from the price down, with commodity ingredients wherever possible. That is the harder manufacturing problem, and the one we think scales in India.

Source: GFI State of the Industry, 2026

We began building our high-moisture extrusion line in 2022 and opened the Rudrapur protein plant in 2023. Since then we have built a continuous, automated chaap line in-house, been granted two Indian patents on that process, added a retort line for shelf-stable canned chaap (2026) and certified the Rudrapur plant to FSSC 22000 for frozen and retorted soya products. Industrial high-moisture extrusion is capital-intensive: GFI's public 2022 model puts a two-line, 7,000-tonne-a-year plant at about $18 million (a modelled figure, not our spend).

Sources: GFI production model; GFI India technology review

Capacity can grow on a process we have already engineered, and the engineering is done in-house. The same base makes chaap, chunks, keema, shawarma shreds, kebabs and coated snacks. Frozen chaap keeps for 18 months, and canned chaap needs no cold chain at all, which opens export.

Across both plants we make products for 30+ customer brands, including a national QSR chain, serve 150+ business customers, and export to the UAE, South Africa, Canada, Australia, the West Indies and Nepal, among others.

The longer argument on price and manufacturing is in Why cheap protein is hard to make. The basic facts about the company are on the Company Facts page.