In 2015, 31-year-old Diganta Saikia came back home to Dibrugarh’s Khowang from Delhi to help manage the family businesses. But he soon spot...
In 2015, 31-year-old Diganta Saikia came back home to Dibrugarh’s Khowang from Delhi to help manage the family businesses. But he soon spotted another business opportunity that aligned well with his interests: pigs and pork.
His brother who had also left his life in Bengaluru recently to start anew in Assam harboured similar plans. “One day, I told my brother I want to keep five pigs, and he told me, ‘Even I want to keep five pigs,’” Saikia recalled in a telephone conversation.
The two men put in six months of market research “before buying even one piece of brick”. But as Saikia said: “We already knew how lucrative it was.”
Piggery boom
It was a bit of a no-brainer. Pork is the meat of choice for several communities in the North East – the region consumes 75% of the approximately 4 lakh tonnes of pork produced in India annually. Some estimates show that two in three people in the region eat the meat. The market, though, is plagued by a yawning mismatch between local supply and demand. Even though the region accounts for nearly 40% of India’s total pork production, as much as 70% of the local demand, according to industry data, is fulfilled by shipments from other...
