Burts Chips has looked to the East for its first foray into the world food aisle.

The Devon-based company has launched Anita's Chips, an exotic range of handcooked crisps in flavours inspired by Indian cuisine.

The range, which is available in Dill & Mint Raitha, Achaari Paneer, Chicken Tikka and Mango & Lime Chutney flavours (rsp: £1.69/150g), was trialled in selected Tesco branches in November and rolls out to 50 further stores this month. Smaller packs (rsp: 69p/40g) will hit the independents over the next month.

While competition was high in the premium bagged snacks market, there was a real gap for authentically Indian handcooked potato crisps, claimed Anita's Chips brand developer Dylan Patel, whose aunt provided the inspiration for the range. "Aunt Anita was renowned for her cooking and if she was here she would have come up with these flavours straight away," he said. "The pack designs are based on my mother's saris as we wanted to keep it in the family and not lose track of where the brand was coming from. We've been pleasantly surprised by the initial uptake and want the brand to make it big nationally."

Anita's comes under the Burts portfolio and the naturally flavoured crisps are fried on the same site as the rest of the company's chips.

The launch will be supported by a £250,000 multimedia marketing spend including a new TV ad campaign in the new year.

At the same time, Burts is running ads on Facebook and YouTube to maximise brand reach.