From a modest oil trading business in Bareilly to a diversified FMCG and agri enterprise with a turnover of nearly ₹15,000 crore, BL Agro’s growth story is a testament to vision, innovation, and manufacturing excellence. Under the leadership of Ashish Khandelwal, Managing Director of BL Agro, the company has successfully transformed itself into one of India’s leading food and agri businesses, driven by trusted brands, robust manufacturing capabilities, and a strong commitment to technology and sustainability. In this exclusive interaction with Machine Edge Global, Khandelwal shares insights into BL Agro’s remarkable journey, the evolution of its manufacturing philosophy, the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies, sustainability initiatives, and his vision for the future of Indian manufacturing and food processing.
BL Agro has evolved from a regional edible oil brand into a diversified FMCG and agri powerhouse with a turnover of nearly ₹15,000 crore. What have been the key milestones in this remarkable journey?
Two things that have always been constant in your journey, are disciplined vision and the courage to reinvent ourselves at every stage of growth. We started as a modest oil trading enterprise and our first pivotal shift happened in the 1980s when we decided to transform from a trading company to manufacturing. Setting up our own processing infrastructure gave us control over quality, consistency, and margins. Then followed our investment in building a consumer brand, Bail Kolhu. The mustard oil soon became a household name and its success was deep-rooted in its purity and trust.
Till then most of the mustard oils across North India were treated as a commodity, we flipped the playbook. We chose to create a differentiated brand with Bail Kolhu. Another important aspect was our leap for portfolio diversification through the 2000s and 2010s. We entered into foods, spices, rice, pulses, and eventually premium FMCG segments with our FMCG brand Nourish in the year 2019. The brand soon became aspirational for modern retail and urban consumers. We also created a robust distribution reach from a regional base to a pan-India footprint. Recently we have also forayed into B2B supply chains with raw and processed agri commodities to large institutional buyers and exporters. This significantly has boosted our turnover.
As I look back, a journey that started in a small town of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh in the pre-independence days has now grown into what is today a Rs. 15,000 crore empire. We are now aiming to becoming a Rs. 30,000 crore entity by 2030. What gives me great satisfaction is that we have built it on the strong foundation of manufacturing, farmer partnerships, and consumer trust.
Manufacturing has been at the heart of BL Agro’s growth story. How has the company’s manufacturing philosophy evolved over the last five decades?
Our guiding philosophy is ‘Make it right before you make it big.’ Our success has been derived from the fact that right from our early days we have never compromised on product integrity. Be it cold-press process for our mustard oil or the hygiene standards in our packaging facilities, our ethos have stood the test of time when even as our scale has grown dramatically.
The growth journey of BL Agro started in 1986 when the company decided to expand operations with the production of mustard oil under brand name ‘Bail Kolhu. The success of the mustard oil gave us the much-needed fuel to drive and in less than two years the family business transformed into an organization called B.L. Agro Oils Pvt. Ltd. This also led to our first processing unit at Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh with a capacity of 100 tonnes per day. With demand increasing, the refining capacity was upped to 800 TPD, packaging to 1800 TPD, warehousing capacity to 48000 tonnes. We have also developed or own railway siding and fractionation plant.
The evolution of our manufacturing philosophy is based on three three pillars, Quality, Compliance, and Innovation. We have obtained FSSC 22000 and other global certifications that is testament to our quality. We have created robust in-house laboratories, and moved towards process-driven quality assurance rather than end-product inspection alone.
We have also aligned our facilities with FSSAI guidelines, BIS standards, and export-quality benchmarks, highlighting our strict alignment with compliance. On the innovation part we have invested in R&D for new product development, packaging formats, and fortification technologies.
BL Agro requires a continual supply of energy, where the carbon emissions are quite natural. Hence, for all the energy consumption requirements, the company relies 100% on Solar Energy for in-house packaging plant. The BL Agro manufacturing unit at Bareilly has also installed state-of-the-art air purifiers across units that help curb and map the emissions from the unit, giving a chance to minimize the emissions.
Could you share some of the latest technologies and smart manufacturing practices being implemented at BL Agro?
Technological evolution is the cornerstone of our manufacturing success. Some of the most impactful implementations in recent years have been with automated filling and packaging lines across our FMCG product lines. We have also installed high-speed automated filling machines with vision-based quality checks that detect fill level deviations, seal integrity issues, and label placement errors in real time. This has led to reduction in manual inspection dependency significantly.
We have also deployed SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems for our oil processing plants. This has given our plant managers a real-time dashboard view of temperature, pressure, flow rates, and extraction parameters and has led to significant improvement in consistency and energy efficiency.
We have also implemented batch coding and traceability systems that allow us to track any product lot from raw material procurement through processing to dispatch. This is critical not just for regulatory compliance, but for rapid response in any quality incident. To enable predictive maintenance alerts before a breakdown occurs and reduce unplanned downtime and extending machine life, we have deployed IoT sensors. This helps us to monitor vibration, temperature, and operational load on a real time basis.
We have imbibed the best of the technologies available in advance economies like the US, France, Germany, South Korea, Spain, Cyprus, and Brazil. This is a journey where we are evolving every day.
The FMCG sector is becoming increasingly technology-driven. How is BL Agro integrating digital tools, data analytics, and AI into its manufacturing and supply chain operations?
Digital transformation in FMCG is no longer optional, it is a way of life. At BL Agro, we are prioritising areas where technology creates the most tangible business value. One of the biggest adoption of AI we are seeing in the industry is the area of demand sensing. In a diverse market like India, where a dialect changes in every 100k, food preferences vary as well. For example, the way a mustard oil brand perceived in Bareilly will be very different from how it is perceived in Delhi or Kolkata. AI is now creating a paradigm shift in this field. Today, demand sensing has changed fundamentally. Today, demand sensing has changed fundamentally. Machine learning models, when fed with the right combination of point-of-sale data, weather patterns, agricultural cycles, and regional festive calendars, can predict demand at a hyperlocal level with a precision that was unimaginable just five years ago. Smarter demand forecasting means less waste, fewer stockouts, and a more consistent consumer experience.
We are also leveraging AI to detect anomalies in the production line. These can be detection of impurities, inconsistent fill levels, or labelling errors. All these are happening in real time and they are catching errors that are in real time difficult for humans to see. Predictive maintenance tools, meanwhile, flag equipment anomalies before they lead to downtime or contamination risks. These are not futuristic investments; they are practical, deployable technologies that directly protect brand equity.
Sustainability is now a critical aspect of manufacturing. What steps is BL Agro taking towards energy efficiency, waste reduction, and environmentally responsible production?
Sustainability is not a tick box activity for us. It is embedded in how we do our business. We require a continual supply of energy, where the carbon emissions are quite natural. So over the last few years we have consciously tried to maintain a fine balance with sustainability. For all our energy consumption requirements, we have shifted to 100% on Solar Energy for in-house packaging plant.
The BL Agro manufacturing unit at Bareilly has also installed state-of-the-art air purifiers across units that help curb and map the emissions from the unit, giving a chance to minimize the emissions. We also work closely with the farming communities to promote sustainable agricultural practices that will go a long way in ensuring a sustainable future for us.
India’s food processing sector is witnessing rapid growth. What opportunities do you see for Indian manufacturers in both domestic and global markets?
These are great times for India’s food processing industry. As an industry we see ourselves at the confluence of several powerful growth drivers, domestically and globally.
On the domestic front, we are witnessing that the Indian middle class’ changing food habits are creating a robust demand for packaged and branded foods. They are not shying away from willing to pay a premium for quality and convenience. Segments like ready-to-cook meals, fortified foods, flavoured oils, and health-oriented snacks have witnessed double-digit growth. Government’s initiatives like PLISFP (Production Linked Incentive for Food Processing) and the Mega Food Park programme is also accelerating investment and scale-building in the sector. These incentives are making Indian food processing globally cost-competitive.
On the global front, we are witnessing that Indian cuisine is becoming a part of the mainstream. Especially, turmeric, mustard, pulses, and special rice varieties. The ever growing Indian diaspora has already helped us to increase footprint in the US, UK, Middle East, and South-East Asia. And now the popularity of Indian cuisine is helping Indian manufacturers to get a strong foot-hold into global food chains as trusted, cost-effective, and quality-compliant producers. However, Indian businesses have to invest consistently in food safety certifications, traceability systems, and consistent quality protocols.
In your view, how is the future of manufacturing in India changing with the rise of Industry 4.0 and smart factories?
India is now well poised to take a giant leap manufacturing and emerge as a global leader. I am genuinely excited about what this means for sectors like food processing and FMCG. What is happening right now is the integration of IoT, AI, robotics, and advanced analytics into manufacturing. This leading to creation of smart factories that are efficient and intelligent. Add to this agility, which is a powerful competitive differentiator.
These factories will go a long way to solve some of our perennial challenges, primarily labour productivity and consistency. There is a myth that automation eliminate jobs in our sector but on the contrary it brings in efficiency by reducing dependence on manual and repetitive tasks. We would also need more skilled technicians, data analysts, and process engineers and as a nation need to keep pace with reskilling. At BL Agro, our aspiration is clear. We want to create a sustainable and a scalable future for food manufacturing in India.