The Allana group’s unprecedented donation comes when India is trying to penetrate new meat markets, especially in Islamic countries.
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In 2014, Narendra Modi accused the United Progressive Alliance government of promoting a “pink revolution” and encouraging the slaughter of cattle. “Across the countryside, our animals are getting slaughtered,” he had said. “Across India too, there are massive slaughterhouses in operation.”
The beef industry has been an old target of Hindutva campaigns, even though Indian firms export buffalo and not cow meat.
And yet, the industry has not only survived but grown under the Modi government. At the centre of this quiet success is the 160-year-old Allana group, India’s top exporter of buffalo meat.
In 2024-’25, the group, led by Irfan Allana, donated an unprecedented Rs 30 crore to the Bharatiya Janata Party, according to disclosures filed with the Election Commission of India.
This coincided with India’s beef exports crossing $4 billion in 2025 – a level breached for the first time since 2018, according to data available with the Ministry of Commerce.
Parallely, Allanasons Private Limited, the group’s flagship export firm, also recorded a revenue of more than Rs 10,000 crore for the first time since 2018.
Why would a company whose core business is demonised by the ruling party fund that very party?
In response to Scroll’s questions about the reason for the unprecedented donations, Fauzan Alavi, Executive Director of the Allana Group, said that “positive transformations” were taking place under the Modi government for “sustainable growth”, and the Allana group “has endeavoured to contribute positively towards the further development and growth of a Viksit Bharat”.
Hard times
The relationship between the government and the meat industry changed after the Modi government came to power in 2014.
In states like Uttar Pradesh, where the Allana group operates major processing units, its supply chain dried up as Hindutva vigilantes attacked meat traders for purportedly transporting beef, especially targeting Muslim men.
In January 2019, the income tax department raided over 100 premises linked to the Allana group. In April, the department claimed that the group had evaded taxes worth nearly Rs 2,000 crore. The group did not respond to the allegations.
The timing of what happened next is instructive.
In the months following these allegations, the Allana group began purchasing electoral bonds. Public data shows they bought bonds worth Rs 7 crore that year – donating Rs 5 crore to the Shiv Sena and Rs 2 crore to the BJP.
At the time, the Shiv Sena, along with the BJP, controlled the municipal and state machinery in Mumbai and Maharashtra, where the group is headquartered.
Unprecedented donation
Before Modi was elected prime minister, the Allana group had made direct donations to the BJP.
In 2013-’14, it donated Rs 2 crore to the party, followed by Rs 50 lakh in 2014-’15.
This was followed by Rs 2 crore in electoral bond donations in 2019. In 2023-’24, the group donated another Rs 2 crore to the Hindutva party through its firm Frigerio Conserva Allana Private Limited.
This increased 15 times to Rs 30 crore in 2024-’25. The donation was channeled through four firms – Allanasons Private Limited, Frigerio Conserva Allana Private Limited, Frigorifico Allana Private Limited and Indagro Foods Private Limited.
New markets
If the Allana group’s 2019 donations came at a time of tax scrutiny, the Rs 30 crore donation in 2024-’25 appears to be about growth.
India’s beef industry is the third largest in the world. But it took a blow in 2019, when China clamped down on the “grey trade” along its border with Southeast Asia. This trade had allowed Indian beef to flow from Vietnam, its biggest market, into China.
As India’s beef exports to Vietnam shrunk by more than 60%, to offset the loss, exporters like the Allana group set out for new markets, especially in Islamic countries. Egypt and Malaysia began buying more Indian beef. Exports to these countries have doubled to $1.2 billion (or Rs 10,800 crore) in 2024-’25, compared to 2017-’18.
Despite the domestic rhetoric against beef, the Modi government has facilitated this expansion. In January 2023, the Indian government had reportedly asked Indonesia to buy more of its buffalo meat – though the island nation’s response was tepid. That month, the government framed guidelines to provide halal certification to meat exports, which came into effect in October 2024. This move targeted markets in West Asia, Turkey and Singapore.
Days after the guidelines were framed, “food security” was on the agenda during the Egyptian president’s state visit to India. In 2024-’25, Egypt was India’s second largest beef export market. In July 2024, the Arab nation announced that it would open an India office to supervise the halal standards of exported meat.
The revenues of Allanasons Private Limited, which were in a freefall between 2017 and 2021, recovered in this period. The firm has increased its revenues every year since 2021, touching Rs 10,320 crore in 2024-’25, according to its filings with the Registrar of Companies.
This growth mirrors the increase in India’s beef exports. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/fSL5e/5/ Alavi told Scroll that the Modi government’s “rationalising” of income tax rates and “simplifying/streamlining the GST framework” was “commendable”.
“The Allana Group takes great pride in being part of the significant growth trajectory initiated by the central government,” Alavi added, praising the government’s trade diplomacy and the “commencement of numerous Free Trade Agreements”.
@SCROLL.IN
