Allana Group along with its subsidiary Indian Poultry Alliance (IPA) and Captain Fresh, a global packaged seafood player on Monday announced the incorporation of Indian Retail Alliance Private Limited (IRAPL), a joint venture that brings together the two organisations’ complementary strengths to build India’s first at-scale, organised fresh protein retail ecosystem.
Allana Group and Captain Fresh hold 51 per cent and 49 per cent, respectively, of the new entity. Captain Fresh will bring its seafood supply chain capabilities, along with the omni-channel technology stack, under its retail brand ChopServe. This will be complemented by Allana Group’s deep expertise and best-in-class infrastructure across chicken, RTC, and protein processing, backed by a legacy that dates back to 1865.
Together, the platform aims to combine the product and supply chain leadership of both partners with market-facing retail entrepreneurs to organise India’s fragmented protein industry. The platform will retail a comprehensive range of fresh proteins, including seafood, chicken, and mutton, across a pan-India network, serving customers through stand-alone stores, shop-in-shop formats, and HoReCa channels, creating a unified demand network for fresh proteins across India.
Network expansion
“With Allana Group’s trust and institutional legacy, combined with Captain Fresh’s world-class seafood expertise, technology and execution capabilities, Indian Retail Alliance Private Ltd aims to become the organising platform for India’s next phase of growth in fresh protein retail. With a vision to build a 4,000-store network in India within the next 4 years, we will create a scalable ecosystem where local operators can leverage strong sourcing, technology, retail execution, and shared infrastructure to build profitable businesses,” said Asim Allana, Family Promoter, Allana Group.
“In our earlier attempt to organise India’s seafood market through a B2B lens, we didn’t succeed. And that experience taught us invaluable lessons. We realised that the opportunity in fresh protein retail demands strong product leadership coupled with entrepreneurial energy at the distribution end. With Indian Retail Alliance, we’re building on those insights. By combining our product knowledge from Captain Fresh’s global seafood brands with Allana’s unmatched depth across complementary proteins and empowering city-level entrepreneurs to drive execution, we’re creating a platform designed to scale India’s fresh protein retail industry sustainably,” said Utham Gowda, CMD and Group CEO, Captain Fresh.
IRAPL will begin with existing retail operations and will also onboard geography-specific entrepreneurs to manage day-to-day operations. This will be the first-of-its-kind platform in the country, providing the most complete basket of animal protein products through a pan-India retail network.