It sounds a little like selling ice to the eskimos, or the old joke about selling coal to Newcastle, but more than 30 years after Tilda brought basmati from the foothills of the Himalaya to the tables of Britain, the Essex-based company is taking its packaged rice back to India.

With the sub-continent’s middle classes growing in wealth and number and, as strapped for time as their peers in the West, visiting supermarkets on their way home from work to buy packaged and dry foods, Tilda has sensed an opportunity.

“Indians have traditionally bought rice out of open sacks through touch and feel, but, with the introduction of retail chains, the whole process of buying has changed,” Rajnish Ohri, the commercial director of Tilda India, said.

So Tilda, which is based in Rain-ham, has responded by launching eight varieties of its rice in 600 stores in five Indian cities, starting with Bombay. It is targeting products according to regional preferences – basmati in the west and north, long grain in the east and sona masoori in the south – and it believes that over the next one to three years about 15 per cent of its sales will come from India.

It is a marketing move reminiscent of the decision by Patak’s, the British curry sauce maker, to expand into India from its base in Wigan. And it seems obvious, when you think about it: an Indian consumes more than 60kg of milled rice a year, compared with less than 5kg a year for the average person in Britain.

Basmati is the name for varieties of rice grown exclusively in the areas of the Indo-Gangetic Plains, on both sides of the India-Pakistan border. It can only be grown in the soil conditions created by the regional supply of fresh Himalayan water. Moreover, India is the world’s largest rice producer, after China. The domestic basmati market is estimated to be worth more than £130 million a year.

“Basmati has been sold outside India because it is a cash crop for the export market,” Jonathan Calland, Tilda’s public affairs manager in the UK, said, “but India has changed massively. It made no sense for us not to be a player there, where brands are becoming more important.”

Yet there are big supply pressures on basmati, which represents just 0.5 per cent of the global rice market. This has been exacerbated by a rising rupee as well as the new demand inside India, which means that some exporters are choosing not to honour contracts with overseas buyers because they know that they will get a better price at home.

With the next crop not due until November, India may have to import rice this year for the first time in its history because of low stocks.

Prices at international auction have risen as much as 55 per cent year-on-year and this will feed through to customers. Tilda, the biggest dry rice brand in the UK, expects the price of a 1kg bag in Britain to rise from £2.79 to more than £3. “We do not consider it a commodity product. It is a luxury,” Mr Calland said.

Tilda is a private company owned by the Thakrar family, who started out in North London in the early 1970s cleaning and packing rice and pulses after their expulsion from Uganda by Idi Amin’s regime. Originally catering to the needs of the British Asian community, the brand became increasingly mainstream and now is sold in more than 40 countries.

Grains of truth

— There are more than 40,000 varieties of rice. On cooking, rice swells to at least three times its original weight. It contains almost no fat, is cholesterol-free and low in sodium

— Almost half the world’s population relies on rice as a staple. In many Asian countries, the words for rice and food are the same. The world’s largest consumer is China, where a typical greeting translates as: “Have you had your rice today?”

— Basmati means “the fragrant one” in Hindi. The ancient Sanskrit word for rice means “sustainer of the human race”. A new Indian bride first feeds her husband with rice; it is also the first food offered to a newborn baby

— To see how many children a newlywed couple will have, the Finns count the number of grains of rice in the bride’s hair after it is thrown at the wedding

— India has the largest area under rice in the world. Punjab accounts for 10 per cent of all the rice produced in the country

— World rice production in 2004 was just under 610 million tonnes. Only 6-7% is traded internationally. 96% of the world’s rice is eaten in the area in which it is grown

Source: Rice Association; Rice: The Amazing Grain; International Rice Research Institute

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive