Largely from Vietnam, its rapid spread and acceptance in India in the past three years have left experts baffled, and beaming
Yogesh Grover smelled a rotten fish when, in 2007, he moved to India.
After having worked in Africa and Europe, Grover, director of Empire Foods, was left cold by the quality of fish being served in Indian restaurants.
“Even marquee five star restaurants were serving quality that was bad for the price they were charging,” he says. Grover loves fish: Chilean Seabass, Scottish Salmon and Silver Pomfret are his favourites. In a moment of chagrin that is known to come over fish lovers, he remembered the white fish that he had eaten in Europe and placed a trial order of six tonnes of Vietnamese Basa.
That order changed the way Indian hotels serve fish.
Three years after the first Vietnamese consignment landed on Indian shores, imports of Basa have touched around 1,500 tonnes. “In 2011, it should cross 2,000 metric tonnes,” says Rahul Kulkarni, director, marketing, West Coast Group, which imports and sells Basa in retail outlets under the Cambay Tiger brand. Data from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade shows that so far in 2011 India has already imported three-fourths of what it imported in the whole of 2010.
The success of Basa has been so swift that even long-time restaurateurs have been left stunned. “I can’t recall an instance when a fish from another shore has worked its way into the Indian palate so quickly. It is phenomenal,” says Anjan Chatterjee, founder, Speciality Restaurants, which owns Mainland China and Oh! Calcutta. Chatterjee serves Basa in both these restaurant chains.
The rising popularity of Basa means it is replacing the stock fish — River Sole in North India, Bhetki in East India and Ghol or Pomfret in West India — in hotels across India.
This doesn’t mean restaurants don’t serve Indian varieties. They do, but for many dishes that need a fillet for the recipe, Basa is now the fish of choice. And not just for the economics.
From the Mekong Delta
Basa is a harmless little name for the more formidable Pangasius Bocourti. It comes from a huge family of catfish that grows in Vietnam, Thailand, China and Cambodia. Vietnam is the dominant player by far and, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), is the source of 99.9 percent of Pangasius (also known as tra and basa catfish) exports. And the volume of exports has expanded 50-fold over the past decade. “Basa has conquered Europe and it has been accepted in the USA,” says Grover. (In the USA, Basa has fought a bitter war for the catfish title, but more on that later.)
Most of the Basa sold in the global markets is farmed. There is an interesting history to it. Paul Greenberg, a food policy expert, writes in the New York Times: “Ethnic Vietnamese living in exile in central Cambodia used cages suspended below floating houseboats on Cambodia’s Great Lake, or Tonle Sap, to breed this fish for their consumption. They fed the fish rice bran and fish meal.”
Basa has low oxygen demands and breeds very quickly, making it perfect for being farmed. Over the past two decades, the Vietnamese have perfected the manufacturing processes that keep the fish fresh. Once they are filleted, they are immediately freeze dried and packaged such that they remain fresh even after they are transported miles away. And to top it all, they do it very economically.
To understand how economical the process is, compare the rates that Indian hotels have to pay for a kilogramme of fish of different varieties, along with the yield of meat they get from each. There is hardly a contest because Basa wins hands down.
(This story appears in the 25 March, 2011 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)