Ajith Dharan on Bühler India’s growth story and India’s food processing potential

The Uzwil, Switzerland-headquartered plant equipment manufacturer, Bühler, a leader in grains & food solutions as well as advanced materials solutions, entered India in 1993, offering a vast array of solutions for the food processing sector. Since then, it has been expanding its base in India, setting up a manufacturing facility—a hub for exports to Asia, the Middle East, and Africa—in Bengaluru.

IndiFoodBev’s Nilutpal Thakur had a conversation with Ajith Dharan, Head of Business – Grains & Food, South Asia, Bühler India, to know more about the company’s India operations, how it is scaling up capacity, investing in local R&D, supporting India’s food security, and doing its bit to make India a global hub for advanced food processing solutions.

IndiFoodBev: Bühler is 160 years old, and the company has been in India since 1993. Please tell us about the India journey and Bühler’s enhancement of manufacturing capacity and exports from India to scale up operations, as well as Bühler’s India vision and plans.

Ajith Dharan: Bühler entered India in 1993, soon after the liberalization of the Indian economy. Over the past three decades, we have built a strong presence in India with our headquarters and manufacturing facility in Bengaluru.

Our local manufacturing capability has been a critical enabler in tailoring equipment to the unique needs of Indian customers while ensuring faster delivery timelines and competitive pricing. Over the years, Bühler India has worked extensively in manufacturing equipment for the Indian and export markets – initially, we did product and technology transfer from our global factories to India and then, subsequently, developed the innovation capability to design and develop equipment in India itself.

This makes our Bengaluru plant a hub for exports to Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. For instance, all our drum coffee roasters supplied worldwide are manufactured in India. Similarly, biscuit ovens, rice processing machinery, pulses processing equipment, and flour milling equipment, such as plan sifters and purifiers, are now produced here.

In India, we serve a diverse range of customers in the grain milling, rice, cocoa, coffee, bakery, animal feed, advanced materials, and emerging food start-up sectors. This broad industry reach positions Bühler as a trusted partner in driving innovation and ensuring quality across the entire food value chain.

Looking ahead, India continues to be one of Bühler’s most strategic growth markets worldwide. We are scaling up capacities at our Bengaluru plant, investing in local R&D, and deepening collaborations with academia, start-ups, and food tech incubators. Our long-term commitment is to support India’s food security, strengthen exports, and contribute to the government’s vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat by making India a global hub for advanced food processing solutions.

We support our customers through our extensive network of sales and service offices across the country. Today, Bühler India employs approximately 800 full-time employees and 700 partner staff nationwide across operations, sales, services, project execution, and global IT.

What are the most relevant for India amongst Bühler’s solutions across food processing, advanced materials, and mobility sectors?

Ajith Dharan: Bühler’s strongest footprint in India is in grain and food processing, particularly in processing wheat, rice, pulses, coffee, and consumer foods such as chocolate, biscuits, and wafers. With India producing over 350 million tons of grains annually, our solutions in milling, color sorting, and plant automation are highly relevant.

In advanced materials, from Leybold Optics, we offer solutions in thin-film coating technologies that keep buildings cooler with energy-saving glass, protect food with better packaging, and sharpen the performance of automotive lights and consumer electronics.

Our grinding and dispersing systems power the making of battery materials, inks, coatings, and vibrant pigments with consistency and less waste. And with our high-pressure die casting cells, complete with smart automation and real-time process insights, Tier-1 and Tier-2 suppliers can produce precise, high-quality aluminum and magnesium parts at scale.

On the mobility front, we’re helping speed up India’s shift to electric. From reliable, scalable systems to prepare battery electrode slurries, to guiding quality control from pilot lines to full gigafactories, we support every step. Our die casting enables strong, lightweight EV components, while our coating expertise helps keep power electronics cool and efficient.

Put simply, we partner with India’s makers to build cleaner technologies, more competitively, and at the scale the future demands.

Our “in the region, for the region” philosophy allows us to localize these solutions for Indian conditions while leveraging Bühler’s global know-how.

How do you customize machinery for Indian conditions? And please tell us about local R&D efforts aimed at creating solutions tailored to the needs of the Indian market.

Ajith Dharan: India’s diversity of raw materials, cuisines, and consumer preferences means that one-size-fits-all solutions do not work here. For example, the requirements of a basmati rice miller in North India differ greatly from those of a medium-grain rice processor in the South. Similarly, the texture and processing needs of atta vary by region. We adapt our solutions to meet these local specifications while ensuring global quality standards.

Bühler’s Bengaluru R&D Center is integral to our localization strategy, reinforcing our leadership in food and grain processing technologies. With a strong emphasis on research and development to maximize yield and quality, our expert technologists across global R&D hubs work collaboratively to tailor solutions to our customers’ precise needs.

In India, our robust R&D capabilities are particularly distinguished by deep specialization in rice processing solutions, enabling us to deliver high-performance, market-relevant innovations for our partners.

A notable innovation is the PesaMill, a Chakki-equivalent whole-wheat milling solution that was developed in India in collaboration with our Swiss colleagues. We are also designing next-generation biscuit ovens in India, adapted for local requirements. Beyond mechanical solutions, our teams in India handle electronics and automation design, including control panels and digital integration, ensuring end-to-end engineering capability.

Additionally, we are actively engaging with customers, start-ups, and academic institutions to collaboratively develop solutions that address India’s requirements for nutrition, sustainability, and affordability.

You started in India with rice milling machines, but later expanded to flour and pulses milling, coffee roasters, optical sorters, and biscuit ovens. Which sector is the most promising?

Ajith Dharan: India’s food processing sector is broad, and each segment offers distinct opportunities. Rice and wheat will remain core categories due to the sheer scale of consumption and exports. At the same time, consumer foods such as chocolate, biscuits, wafers, and ready-to-eat products are among the fastest-growing categories, driven by urbanization, rising disposable incomes, and changing consumer lifestyles.

Bühler’s portfolio covers many robust segments, but the most promising today — driven by market growth, tech differentiation, and sustainability — are: AI-enabled optical sorting and digitalization; Sustainable food processing, especially plant-based proteins and alternative ingredients; and Advanced milling and grain processing with automation.

Within this landscape, the biscuit industry in India stands out as a substantial and fast-growing segment. To serve this rising demand, we are producing energy-efficient ovens for biscuits and baked goods at our facility in Bengaluru, providing innovative and affordable technology that is both commercially attractive and aligned with the needs of the Indian market.

India’s food processing sector is growing, especially after the pandemic and in the wake of consumers demanding hygienically packed food. What, in your opinion, are the biggest challenges confronting India’s food processing industry? And the future of the sector in India.

Ajith Dharan: India’s food processing industry is at an inflection point. Key challenges include — Scaling capacity while ensuring global standards of food safety and traceability; Reducing post-harvest losses and improving supply chains; and Addressing fragmented production and the need for greater automation and consolidation.

Government initiatives such as Make in India, the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, and the development of mega food parks and cold chain infrastructure are strengthening competitiveness. We expect the sector to become more technology-driven, with larger and more automated plants, adoption of digitalization, and greater emphasis on premium and hygienic packaged foods to meet evolving consumer demands. We are also seeing increased interest in the food processing sector by large Indian and multinational companies, which will be a big boost for the industry.

Bühler recently joined the Millers for Nutrition coalition, which also works in India. How do you see your role in improving nutrition in these countries?

Ajith Dharan: By joining the Millers for Nutrition coalition, Bühler’s role is to help millers fortify staple foods at scale, efficiently, and sustainably. In countries like India – and across other coalition geographies – our focus is to enable safe, consistent, and cost-effective fortification of commonly consumed staples (e.g., wheat flour, rice, edible oils) with essential micronutrients that address widespread deficiencies such as iron, folic acid, vitamin A, vitamin D, and zinc.

Please tell us about your company’s focus on sustainability and innovations – especially in targeting energy, waste, and water reduction.

Ajith Dharan: As a company, we strongly believe that we can achieve the greatest impact by enabling our customers across the value chain in transitioning to a low-carbon economy. Our 50/50/50 goal encapsulates this ambition. We have set up a clear governance structure and lines of responsibility for achieving these targets. Research and development spending is leveraged to directly foster projects that will transform our processing solutions to become more energy and resource-efficient.

At our Bengaluru manufacturing facility, we are reducing our own footprint with measures such as rooftop solar, zero water discharge, energy-efficient machinery, rainwater harvesting, and packaging upcycling. Globally, Bühler is committed to developing a pathway to achieve a 60% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in our own operations by 2030 (Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scopes 1 & 2, 2019 baseline).

You have launched the Smartline biscuit solutions, targeting the growing biscuit and cracker market. How has the response and success been?

Ajith Dharan: Many of our customers and prospects have appreciated Bühler’s efforts to localize biscuit oven production in India. We’ve received strong, positive feedback on our Make in India initiative, and these ovens are meeting the needs of a steadily growing market. The technology has been well received, and interest in our India-made ovens continues to rise, with a healthy flow of new enquiries. Looking ahead, we’re focused on expanding and enhancing our biscuit oven portfolio to serve our customers even better.

Would you like to tell us more about your clients and what solutions you offer to them?

Ajith Dharan: We work with a wide spectrum of customers – from small entrepreneurs to some of India’s largest food processing companies. What sets Bühler apart is our ability to provide end-to-end solutions. This includes everything from plant design, engineering, and line integration to installation, commissioning, and lifecycle services.

We are uniquely positioned to support customers who want to diversify – for example, a flour miller moving into biscuits or pasta – because we cover the value chain from “farm to fork.” Our Services & Sales ecosystem, with nearly 200 service engineers across India, ensures 24/7 support, preventive and predictive maintenance, spare parts, digital services through platforms such as myBühler, and customer training through our Application & Training Centers.