From cars to curry: After vehicles, Suzuki produces another best-seller – pre-packaged food
The company conducted taste tests across months to achieve the perfect authentic flavours before it came up with the pre-packaged kits, requiring simple cooking.
- Oct 30, 2025,
- Updated Oct 30, 2025 3:46 PM IST
You can take an Indian away from India but you can’t take India away from an Indian. And this was precisely the problem staring at the Suzuki employers right in the face. It wasn’t necessarily a hindrance for them, for the automakers made the best out of that too.
Since July 2025, Suzuki has been selling instant Indian vegetarian curries in the Japanese market. This stemmed from their efforts to make Indian employees working in Japan more at home. In order to help them ease in, the employers at the automotive firm partnered with Torizen, a 150-year old restaurant in the city of Hamamatsu to offer pre-packaged curries.
Although the news has now been publicised beyond the company, the curry meals were being served at Suzuki’s factory cafeteria since early 2024.
The story was brought to light by journalist Kushan Mitra, who said, “Fascinating, Suzuki enters the pre-packaged food business in Japan. They’ve launched 4 new packaged Indian curries and in four months they’ve sold 100,000 packets and they plan to expand to 14 different types of curry in the coming months. This ‘business diversification’ was born out of the fact that there are over 200 Indian employees at Suzuki Headquarters for whom Indian meals are prepared daily.”
The company conducted taste tests across months to achieve the perfect authentic flavours before it came up with the pre-packaged kits, requiring simple cooking.
Suzuki decided to commercialise them after noticing their popularity and introduced them as 'Suzuki Cafeteria Indian Vegetarian Curry' to the Japanese market. All the consumer needed to do was to boil the contents of the ready-to-eat kit in water before consuming.
The kits come in four flavours including daikon radish sambar, tomato lentil, chickpea masala, and moong dal green, and each packet costs ¥918, which is around Rs 500.
According to a report in The Mainichi, the company plans to further enhance their menu for foreigners in its cafeteria with Torizen. They are also planning a service to provide meals for foreign employees at companies across Japan.
You can take an Indian away from India but you can’t take India away from an Indian. And this was precisely the problem staring at the Suzuki employers right in the face. It wasn’t necessarily a hindrance for them, for the automakers made the best out of that too.
Since July 2025, Suzuki has been selling instant Indian vegetarian curries in the Japanese market. This stemmed from their efforts to make Indian employees working in Japan more at home. In order to help them ease in, the employers at the automotive firm partnered with Torizen, a 150-year old restaurant in the city of Hamamatsu to offer pre-packaged curries.
Although the news has now been publicised beyond the company, the curry meals were being served at Suzuki’s factory cafeteria since early 2024.
The story was brought to light by journalist Kushan Mitra, who said, “Fascinating, Suzuki enters the pre-packaged food business in Japan. They’ve launched 4 new packaged Indian curries and in four months they’ve sold 100,000 packets and they plan to expand to 14 different types of curry in the coming months. This ‘business diversification’ was born out of the fact that there are over 200 Indian employees at Suzuki Headquarters for whom Indian meals are prepared daily.”
The company conducted taste tests across months to achieve the perfect authentic flavours before it came up with the pre-packaged kits, requiring simple cooking.
Suzuki decided to commercialise them after noticing their popularity and introduced them as 'Suzuki Cafeteria Indian Vegetarian Curry' to the Japanese market. All the consumer needed to do was to boil the contents of the ready-to-eat kit in water before consuming.
The kits come in four flavours including daikon radish sambar, tomato lentil, chickpea masala, and moong dal green, and each packet costs ¥918, which is around Rs 500.
According to a report in The Mainichi, the company plans to further enhance their menu for foreigners in its cafeteria with Torizen. They are also planning a service to provide meals for foreign employees at companies across Japan.