Sambandh: Bringing Norwegian Seafood to India - A chat with the Norwegian Seafood Council

Well, that's great.

And it's good also that you're explaining that you just have changed your role, because I know also that you have been in India for a couple of times now and followed the journey here so far.

And now you are putting it on a new path.

Can you also reflect a little bit on where do you see Norwegian seafood in India a few years from now? Who is cooking? Who is eating? Who is buying? And how is this...

What are you picturing when you're now coming to this country in a greater force?

Yeah, well...

If I had all of those answers, I would start importing it into India.

But I can try to say where we believe things are going to move.

I think the tariffs is going to make salmon more accessible for more people in India.

So the drop of tariffs of 30% will hopefully bring the price down so we can increase the consumer group or the number of people who can afford salmon from Norway today and seafood from Norway today.

What we saw when we've been working with India in the past is also that logistics and cool chain could be an issue and could be a difficulty for growth.

With the extreme growth in e-commerce, we think that will also benefit Norwegian salmon and Norwegian seafood a lot because you take away a big part of the cool chain or the refrigeration chain of the salmon.

I don't know.

I think that if I look five years into the future, I think we will have grown substantially on salmon in India.

And I think most of it will have gone through e-commerce, so that more e-commerce partners will carry Norwegian seafood and will be able to send that out.

The other part of growth will probably be a continued growth through the Rekan restaurants.

Because now we see Norwegian salmon are in restaurants, but the full sushi trend has not hit India just yet.

And we also see that more restaurants does not necessarily only in the top level, in the Michelin high-end level, will be able to sell seafood from Norway and salmon from Norway.

So that's the hope, at least, that we will see a great increase also in home consumption based on e-commerce.

So this is also what we see at the embassy.

The interest for Norwegian salmon is really big among Indians.

And this is also how I understand you, Rian, that salmon is the most important product that you will be taking into India now? Or are there also other Norwegian seafood products that you are thinking of could be good here in India?

No, you are, as I know, you're well informed.

Salmon is going to be what breaks the way for seafood from Norway.

And the reason for that is, of course, it is by far our biggest species, what we have most of to offer.