Tomato puree, frozen veggies are flying off the shelves amid skyrocketing tomato prices

New Delhi: As tomato prices skyrocket, online grocery delivery firm BigBasket has a suggestion. "Tomato Prices Running High? Cook with Tomato Puree instead! Made with 100% ripe tomatoes," the company urged on its mobile application.

Online grocery delivery firms such as BigBasket, Zepto and Blinkit, along with several offline retailers, are witnessing a surge in demand for tomato puree and frozen vegetables as the prices of fresh produce hit the roof. Demand is so high that retailers are running out of stock and manufacturers are ramping up production.

Fresh tomato prices were ruling at Rs 112 per kg in the retail market in Delhi, up from Rs 28 per kg about a month ago. A 200 ml container of puree, equivalent to using about 450 gm of tomatoes, costs Rs 27.

A spokesperson for Dabur said that demand for tomato puree brand Hommade has surged and that it's working hard to keep up with it. Mother Dairy, one of the largest players in the puree and frozen vegetables segment, has seen a 300% increase in the demand for tomato puree and 50% increase in that for frozen vegetables at its stores in the last two weeks. "Production has been ramped up for our tomato puree to take care of the surge in demand," said a spokesperson for Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable, which owns the Safal brand of purees and frozen vegetables.

Quick commerce company Zepto has seen a 120% rise in sales of tomato puree compared with the first week of June.

Rains Add to Supply Gaps
"Tomato ketchup sales are also 10% higher than in the first week of June," a company spokesperson said.

Prices of fruits and vegetables have shot up due to excessive rain and floods in northern states such as Himachal Pradesh. Apart from tomatoes, which are selling at Rs 140 per kg at the Azadpur wholesale market in New Delhi, prices of almost all vegetables including green peas, French beans, ginger and coriander have doubled and are selling well above Rs 100 per kg in the wholesale market.

Harvest-ready vegetables, which would have been grown and dispatched from Himachal Pradesh, have been destroyed by the torrential rains in the hill state.

"There is a surge in demand (for tomato puree) as well as shortage of supply in equal measure," said Amit Dutta, chief executive of grocery retailer Le Marche Retail. "Stocks of puree have dried up even at B2B wholesalers, so there is a gap at the moment which might only widen further as the pipeline has been almost finished."

In order to fill the supply gap, BigBasket is sourcing tomatoes and other vegetables from Bengaluru as well as Nashik for the National Capital Region (NCR) on a daily basis.

"To reduce the customer discomfort, we are selling tomatoes almost at cost," said Seshu Kumar, chief buying and merchandising officer, BigBasket, which has seen the sales of tomato puree double since the first week of June.

In order to rein in tomato prices, the central government has directed procurement agencies - the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (Nafed) and the National Cooperative Consumers Federation (NCCF) - to get them from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra and distribute them in major consumption centres such as the National Capital Region.