How Surya CEO Harry Dulai is building a world foods empire, one cuisine at a time

For Harry Dulai, doing business is all about family. His father arrived on these shores from India in December 1965 with £3 to his name and worked odd jobs while getting a series of market stalls off the ground.

“As his business grew, me and my brother were there. That’s how we’ve learned business,” says Dulai, now group CEO of what has become Surya Foods. “Business is in my family’s blood, and being part of a family business teaches you more than anything else.”

Over the intervening decades, Surya Foods has grown into one of the UK’s largest suppliers of world foods, with turnover hitting more than £250m in 2024.

Surya’s flagship product, Laila Basmati Rice, is the UK’s number-one dry rice brand by volume, according to NIQ’s Dried Rice Report [52 w/e April 2025]. But it owns and manufactures 20 world food brands – including Thai Dragon, Sun Hee (Korean), and Trophi (Greek) – and imports 20 more. Customers include Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, as well as thousands of independent retailers nationwide.

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“We’re brand builders. We’re distributors. We’re manufacturers for own label as well as our own brands across African, Caribbean, Oriental, south Asian, Mediterranean and eastern European,” Dulai says. “Our expertise is obviously in that world food segment and, as we know, there’s ever-growing interest in it.”

There certainly is, with Tesco, Morrisons and Ocado all adding hundreds of new world food products this year. And Dulai has been on the frontline “for 35 years” to witness the changing tastes of UK consumers. It’s a change he’s even seen play out in Surya’s biggest product: rice.

The company sources directly from India, Pakistan, Cambodia and more, with rice mills in India and the UK. Dulai says the UK is now “a nation of rice lovers”.

“It’s slowly gaining ground on potatoes, and there’s also a shift towards a more authentic rice whether it’s basmati, jasmine, African or even Korean bibimbap rice,” he adds. “If you go to local ethnic retailers you’ll see these more authentic rices – and British consumers going to ethnic stores is on the rise. They love it. We’re certainly finding a lot more non-ethnic consumers buying into our products and rice.”

He puts this down to a number of factors, but TV cooking shows are “our biggest, free influencer”, helping regionality “become a thing” in Britain.

“You’re watching MasterChef, and the majority of the dishes have a strong international influence,” he says. “The savviness of consumers has changed. Many now understand: this is north Indian, this is south Indian.”

Consumer appetite for “authenticity” is boosting Surya’s business too. Gone are the days when a home cook’s options in the world food aisle were limited to anglicised world food brands. Now, a smorgasbord of authentic products made overseas awaits, from Lao Gan Ma chilli oil to Mae Ploy curry pastes and Healthy Boy oyster sauce – the latter two being part of Surya’s import offering to UK supermarkets.

“There’s more authentic products coming through. And that’s what that the world food aisle should be. You want something a bit different, or a bit more artisan,” Dulai says.

When it comes to the retailers, originally the primary reason for stocking world foods was “getting ethnic consumers into the store”, and while that has “evolved”, Dulai feels “more could be done”.

“There’s no new ethnic cuisines that have been brought in,” he laments. “You’re still sitting in the same lanes – you’ve got south Asian, you’ve got Oriental, you’ve got eastern European. That’s been the same for 15 to 20 years; those categories haven’t been rebuilt.

“Some retailers are getting a bit bolder, but you know what it’s like with buyers – they work off historic data,” he adds. “We go out and see what’s happening in the real world, and that’s why we’ve been able to build those categories up. As a business, we’re good at the basics, but we’ve also got the foresight on market opportunities.”

The next big thing in world foods

One of Surya’s newest bets is Indo-Chinese cuisine. In July, it added 15 ambient lines to its Indo-Chinese brand Khao Chi, which originally consisted of frozen products. The new offering includes Manchurian Prawn Crackers, Hakka Noodles and Momos Dipping Chutney.

It was a bold move, given Indo-Chinese food – a fusion of Indian and Chinese ingredients and techniques dating back to the 1700s – is still niche in the UK.

“It is, but it’s a huge trend back in India,” says Dulai. “And if you look at the UK, in restaurants especially, it’s emerging. In London you’ll see momos as appetisers. It’s a taste profile people like. British consumers like Indian food, they like Chinese. It’s simple maths.”

Elsewhere in the world foods aisle, Dulai feels there’s still “a lot more to come” from Korean food. He also predicts a bright future for west African flavours, where he’s seeing “more interest”.

Mostly, though, Dulai senses opportunity in world cuisines already familiar to British consumers, but where he feels “there hasn’t been great delivery”.

“As a UK consumer, if you could buy authentic Mexican products, would you? Probably. I know I would. There’s also a big Middle Eastern community in the UK. Is it being serviced well? I don’t think so.

“And noodles is a big opportunity. The noodle category is massive, and there’s so much diversity. You go to a Chinese supermarket and you’ll see a whole aisle of them! Sure, you’ve got your mainstream brands, but do we want the big, Anglicised versions of food, or do we want the real deal?”