The Kacang Puteh industry has existed in Malaysia for more than 80 years. All started with a clan of a family from South India settled in Ipoh, Perak. They were doing various work from rubber tapping, mining, government clerks to some businesses activities, but there is no solid evidence to support any of this. Anyhow, all this would take a drastic turn when the place they inhabited had a rock slide and killed many members of the clan.

The local government back then relocated them to the now know place as “Kampung Kacang Puteh”. Once they arrived at the new place, they wanted to support their families for basic needs and started making traditional “Kacang Puteh”. A one item snack food business which focuses on selling boiled and seasoned “Kacang Puteh”. Kacang means nut or peanut or beans and Puteh means white. From there, many of them started their own stall in different places to support their families.

After a few decades, other people who were staying in that area also started picking up the same business and the competition grew stiffer. Hence to remain competitive, everyone started making more variety of products and range to offer more products to the consumer. Thus, a whole new industry and a product category were born.

Now there are about 200 Kacang Puteh manufacturer’s in the country and about 85% of them are from “Kampung Kacang Puteh”. As the product continues to grow and reach more audience, the Malay and Chinese also started to venture into this business with their own taste and culture in the business. From that, there are about the only handful of companies which operate with a factory and proper business model. Majority of them still maintain and hard labor and handmade snack. This industry is recognized as “Industri Desa” meaning village industry to support the local SME’s and promote tourism activities.

Kacang Puteh products are available from America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Its available in almost every country and this change only happened in the last decade. The total market size of this product category is still very small as there is no brand leader or any prominent company which will make with product category a glo-cal product.