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LA Group’s Green Dragon “filter khaini.” Photo credit: LA Group
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Harsh Industries’ Chewah has become a popular “filter tobacco” brand in Russia. Photo credit: Harsh Industries
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Nittin Gupta, Harsh Industries’ head of international marketing and sales. Photo credit: Harsh Industries
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LA Group’s Vikas (left) and Pushaan (right) Grover at their booth at the recent WT Middle East exhibition. Photo credit: LA Group
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An increasing number of Indian companies are taking to making snus to cash in on rising demand for smokeless tobacco products.
“Khaini” is a traditional tobacco product peculiar to the Indian subcontinent and neighboring countries, but popular as far as the Middle East. In the West, it is often – yet erroneously — referred to as “Indian chewing tobacco” or “Indian snus”. In fact, it is neither… though it does impart certain characteristics of chewing tobacco as well as snus. The situation gets even more confusing when the relatively recently coined term “filter khaini” is thrown in.
Nevertheless, modern “filter khaini” is indeed western-style, portion pouch-packed snus. While the laurels as the undeniable pioneer of spreading snus around the globe belong to Swedish Match, an increasing number of Indian manufacturers are discovering this smokeless tobacco product as a lucrative new revenue channel.
The rise of filter khaini
Two of these companies are Delhi-based Harsh Industries Ltd., a member of the Mahak group of companies, and, headquartered in the northern state of Punjab, Lachhman Dass Amarnath (A.V.), which by request from the company we subsequently shall abbreviate to “LA Group.” But there are still others, such as AVB International, an off-shoot of India’s Dilbagh group. AVB, which has been heavily concentrating on its filter khaini and white snus business for quite some time, claims to be presently the only pharma grade-certified factory for this product segment in India, adhering to cGMP standards.
Meanwhile, Harsh Industries can be regarded the trailblazer of this nascent product segment, as the company launched its first brand, Chaini, as early as 2002. Subsequently, it came out with lime-flavored BT and mint-flavored Tara in 2004 and 2006, respectively. However, it was only in 2022 that the company rolled out its two latest brands, developed primarily for the Russian market. While Chewah is made from a very strong tobacco blend and is flavored with mint, Oddrin features a rather mild, unflavored blend.
The company’s decision to add the product range to its portfolio was a quite conscious one to begin with, according to Harsh Industries’ head of international marketing and sales, Nittin Gupta. “Khaini has been a long-time favorite with Indian consumers. So we thought that it might be a good idea to offer a ‘filtered’ version with better-quality tobacco that also is less harmful [to health] than conventional khaini. Our hunch was right and our brands have since gained footprints in many export markets,” Nittin told Tobacco Asia. “Once we had hit the jackpot, some 20 other companies – one by one—began rolling out their own brands, too, of course,” he smirked.
From snuff to filter khaini
Among these is LA Group, a company with decades-long expertise in producing snuff, as well as other smokeless tobacco products. However, it wasn’t until 2020 that the firm finally introduced its inaugural filter khaini brand, Gold Rush, a medium-bodied blend of Indian rustica and bright virginia tobaccos and flavored with lime, mint, and menthol. Gold Rush is currently primarily marketed in the US and China, according to LA Group’s director of business development, Pushaan Grover. Gold Rush was soon supplemented by Green Dragon in 2022, a product that goes back to the roots of traditional khaini by flavoring its tobacco blend with an India-inspired spice mix of cardamom and slaked lime (calcium hydroxide). There also is a rose-flavored version, which is preferred mainly by consumers in the Middle East, Pushaan Grover divulged to Tobacco Asia.
An excellent alternative to cigarettes
“Smokeless tobacco products are an excellent alternative to cigarettes,” observed Gupta. “You can enjoy them anywhere without violating anti-smoking laws and demand is increasing globally day after day.” By his own account, it didn’t faze him at all that snus – and thus, filter khaini – is still banned in most of the European Union, except the Nordic countries. “We have been focusing on Russia and its neighboring countries for the last couple of years and found the region to be a boom market for snus,” he said. “Apart from that, the Middle East likewise provides for fantastic opportunities and we would like to partner up with a local company to spearhead our sales there.”
A surprising homecoming Interestingly, filter khaini apparently also is making an impact in its homeland, India. Smokeless tobacco products have traditionally been big business there, enjoying a huge consumer base of about 260 million users. However, buoyed by their success abroad, local manufacturers have now brought filter khaini into the limelight in the Indian market, very often with the help of gigantic advertising campaigns.
“The main reason for the success of filter khaini is because it’s discrete,” said Pushaan Grover’s father, Vikas Grover, LA Group’s managing partner, as well as a working member of the Smokeless Tobacco Federation of India. “The small pouch in the upper lip is not easily discernible, which is its unique selling point. Portion snus – or filter khaini, for that matter - was an unknown concept in India about 20 years back, although even then tremendous volumes of loose [traditional] khaini went over sales counters.”
The “Filter Khaini” Confusion
The term “filter khaini” was coined by Indian manufacturers to describe the product commonly known as “snus” in Europe and North America. “Filter khaini was initially developed by some Indian manufacturers to compete with Swedish snus in western markets, and when the same product was launched in India, it was rechristened ‘filter khaini’ to take advantage of the popularity and familiarity of [real] khaini among Indian consumers,” explained LA Group’s Vikas Grover. “Filter” is of course referring to the portion pouch, whose material closely resembles that of a tea bag or coffee filter. Meanwhile Grover’s industry colleague Shivam Bihani, partner at AVB International, told Tobacco Asia at a recent tobacco expo in no uncertain words: “’Filter khaini’ is not khaini masquerading as snus. It is snus… with flavor profiles adjusted to customer preferences in different markets.” To make for a clearer distinction between Western and Asian flavor profiles, some companies – most notably LA Group – have come to calling their western-style products “filter tobacco” or “filter snus” while the Asian versions continue to be marketed as “filter khaini”.