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Reimagining The Humble Bread | Aditi Handa and Sneh Jain @ The Baker’s Dozen
265 Plays3 years ago
This edition is a delectable one where Akshay Datt chats with a couple elevating India’s experience of bread consumption. Aditi Handa and Sneh Jain are the founders of The Baker’s Dozen, India’s first artisan bakery brand serving an exquisite variety of authentic European breads and bakery products.
Aditi is a trained baker from the renowned International Culinary Institute in New York and Sneh is an IIM-A alumnus and an ex-McKinsey consultant. Together they started up the venture, with Aditi passionately steering the product, and Sneh building the business with an eye on the numbers.
Know about:-
- Aditi’s learnings at International Culinary Institute, New York
- Sneh Jain’s epiphany at McKinsey- using lego blocks to create a world
- Scaling up the supply chain
- Evolution of sales channel: the omnichannel approach
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Transcript
Introduction and Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
Before we start today's episode, I want to give a quick shout out to Zencaster, which is a podcaster's best friend. Trust me when I tell you this, Zencaster is like a Shopify for podcasters. It's all you need to get up and running as a podcaster. And the best thing about Zencaster is that you get so much stuff for free. If you are planning to check out the platform, then please show your support for the founder thesis podcast by using this link, zen.ai slash founder thesis.
00:00:27
Speaker
That's zen.ai slash founder thesis.
00:00:46
Speaker
All one needs to survive in this world are bread, clothing and housing. And in this episode, we talk to a couple that is helping elevate the experience of bread consumption in the country. If you are a bread lover yourself, then you may have guessed it. I am talking about the baker's dozen. Aditi Handa did expect to become an entrepreneur. She just wanted to make good bread. Sneh Jain was working with a top consulting company after graduating from I.M.M.abad.
00:01:16
Speaker
Together they started up the baker's dozen with Aditi passionately stirring the product and Sneh building the business with an eye on the numbers.
Founders' Backgrounds and Bakery Origin
00:01:25
Speaker
Today the baker's dozen is amongst the top premium bread brands in the country operating out of a central plant in Ahmedabad where they employ hundreds of workers who churn out high quality bread, biscuits and cakes for the discerning India. Here's Aditi and Sneh talking to Akshay Dutt about how it all began.
00:01:42
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Snee Jain here, co-founder at the Baker's Castle. When Snee and me met, and the first year of our marriage, we were actually based out of Canada. He was working with McKinsey in Canada. And I was a bookie since I'm at the Botswana shop, the project is now closed. Later at some point, when Snee and me said, okay, let's get together and start a business. And when we started narrowing it down to a bakery,
00:02:05
Speaker
That's when I said, okay, it's nothing. One of us needs to be trained in it. And since I already had a admin in that direction, that's when I went to New York to train as a baker. I went there to train myself as a baker, but you're also really serious about what you're learning, right? When you're in college, you learn, you pass some exams, you have a good time. But very rarely does one as dedicated in college to say that I'm going to make my life out of the subject I'm studying.
00:02:30
Speaker
This time, when I took up baking, Snee and my younger brother, who was a co-founder with us at the Baker's Dyson at that point, were banking on my skill set for them to make a business out of. So it was very, very important that I get things right and I learned much more than what they were going to teach me. So I feel it was a two-month course. It's from the basis of everything today that we do at the Baker's
Inspiration and Entrepreneurship
00:02:52
Speaker
Dyson. And where did you go for this course?
00:02:54
Speaker
This was around April 2012. Okay. And what's your backstory? So, Akshay, I'm in Bombay, did my engineering from there, from Bombay, then did my MBA from I am Amtaba, classic middle class, grade A student, ready to take up a job and move ahead in corporate life. I got placed in McKinsey. So, you know, in McKinsey, obviously they focus a lot on employee training and skill development and
00:03:22
Speaker
because that's the main resource, right? So, in one of our trainings and we were taken to Shanghai too, it was like a leadership development program. So, they were trying to build people who would become leaders within McKinsey and they had this very interesting thing where they gave you a lot of Lego blocks and told that create your world five years down the line. So, can you visualize what your life would be or what your aim would be five years down the line?
00:03:51
Speaker
And I actually built one of those classic factories with a ceiling and chimneys and a nice looking car on the front because that always has to be there. And I remember the instructor asking me, so what is this? And I said, that's my factory. And you almost looked at me saying that you're in McKinsey. You're like, what's going to be setting up factories five years down?
00:04:18
Speaker
And that's when I still remember after that session I called Aliti, she was in Canada at that time and I told her that I think I'm going to leave. While they got me to develop me, I think I've developed too much and now I need to leave.
00:04:31
Speaker
So that's how I decided in a way, realized that I want to do something on my own. And also, I'm very clear, I wanted to do something where I could touch the product. It has to be a very, very physical part to it, right? I'm not somebody who can work a lab with, you know, intangible things. I need the product in front.
00:04:55
Speaker
I need a manufacturing, I need that project. I remember, I left around February 2012, and around March 2012, we were in one room. We had a whiteboard in front, and we said, in Ahmedabad. So we moved to, from a work point of view, we moved for some time to Ahmedabad at that time. So we were in a room, there was a whiteboard,
00:05:23
Speaker
And we actually started dropping down business ideas. And it was almost a very thick exercise where we started, okay, Roti, Kapiram, Makan, we actually went to that level. Okay. Okay. What can we do in food? Okay. Textiles does not interest us. We came up with weird ideas or actually ranging ideas ranging from old age homes to stem cell research to
00:05:49
Speaker
we thought of like a big buskin kind of inventory model. So we went through the entire range and that's when we said port seemed interesting and within port then bakery came up finally.
00:06:04
Speaker
Okay. Bakery as in like a commercial grade bakery was what you thought or you thought like a say you have like Teobraba, all of these, like, like you thought something like that, like retail. So this was a little bit funny. You know, this idea came in a very passing state when we were having lunch with someone.
00:06:20
Speaker
and discussing future entrepreneurship ideas. And whilst eating lunch, someone made a passing statement, this was more of a reaction to something we were eating at that point. And we used to voice a call on meetings at that point to hear them later. And we said, yeah, this is true that whenever it comes to bread in India, it is so messy, not nice. The kind of bread we used to get in Europe is not what you get over here.
00:06:47
Speaker
And we said, this sounds good. Let's put up on the whiteboard this idea of a
Focus on Bread and Initial Strategy
00:06:52
Speaker
good bakery. At that point, we found bread and cake. But once I went for my course in New York, since I connected a lot with bread and I didn't really connect with cake at that point, we said, let's turn a bakery that only bakes bread.
00:07:04
Speaker
And we really, really wanted to do justice to bread and bring all its tradition and the honor around it or the goodness around it to Bombay and just see what that turns out to be like.
00:07:19
Speaker
Okay. So you're not talking about opening a retail outlet bakery, but more like supplying to supermarkets? We wanted to do it on our own brand. So I think it was always clear that we have a small baking unit and we have a small shop. Due to real estate constraints in Bombay, we knew these will not be front and back. The bakery will be in our lower real estate place. Whereas our own shop will be on a high street. The first shop that we put up was
00:07:50
Speaker
over the 225 square feet shop in Bhagwadivi, we ride in the main road at Burghi. So we always knew it would be something like that. But at that point, we said, okay, one shop, and you know, we're done. For five years, no more. You just, when things start rolling for you, then you're like, why would we want your wine at a hundred? So you finalised on bakery, then you went to New York to do the course. And meanwhile, what were you doing? Like you must have been preparing for like the factory and stuff like that.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, so we were setting up the first kitchen, you know, that time it was a kitchen, today it's a factory. But it was a thousand square feet kitchen in central Bombay, in Vadada. And very basic, you know, we're looking at the equipment. One of the things which we were very clear, if we had to make good bread and make it the way you authentically get
00:08:39
Speaker
let's say in Europe or anywhere else, you need the right equipment for it. I remember Aditi went to a baking program in India first, before she went to New York, and every day she would come back, it was a one-week-long program, and she would come back every day with samples at the end, and we would taste it,
00:08:59
Speaker
And to be honest, every day tasted the same, irrespective of the product. At that time, we felt this is not where we are going to be learning the authentic art of baking. And that's when Aditi went there. So in the meanwhile, even from an equipment point of view, our critical equipment, which is our ovens, our mixers,
00:09:18
Speaker
These are imported European equipment. To give a very small example, they have that crust. Now, you don't get that crust in a normal oven. You need it to be in a stone-baked oven. That classic pizzas are baked.
00:09:42
Speaker
Now, those are the ovens we use for baking bread, which most bakeries in India will not, because it's more expensive. But that, that is what, you know, we were setting up at that time while Aditi was going that loose. Okay. Okay. So how did you then launch? Like you used your savings and you like rented a kitchen, rented a retail store. Like tell me about the journey, like the actual launch, like then go to market.
00:10:07
Speaker
We first set up the kitchen and while that was setting up, I was already on the lookout for a retail space for our store. The initial idea was very simple, that we'd start with one brand store and then kind of take it from there, how it picks up. At that time, there was no major fire plan, business plan, there was no channel, any channel approach, all of these, but buzzwords were not there at that time.
00:10:32
Speaker
And let's start selling it in a way and i still remember we had our kitchen got set up around in december 2012 jan 2013. I was not being able to find a retail space one of the options that we had finalized in pravathiri at that time but there were some issues with the landlords and it kept getting delayed.
00:10:53
Speaker
So then we said why not start a delivery business from our kitchen in the meanwhile because we are spending money every month. There is a rent meter that is ticking while we finalize the store. Can we at least start up with doing some sales and customer development? So what Aditya and me did was we identified around 8 to 10 big residential complexes in that area. We used to also stay there in Pareil
00:11:22
Speaker
and we found like these complexes with 500,000 flats each. Generally, through some friends and friends of friends, we would know one out of people in each of these complexes, right? What we would just tell them is in the evening at around five o'clock, just get us entry into your building. So, Aditya and me would go, we would go with like these hundred packs or two to bread each.
00:11:46
Speaker
She would take evening, I would take evening, we would go right from like, we would go to the tech floor and keep coming down. And if we were actually knocking on each door.
00:11:56
Speaker
Now, first, we would just say, hi, Uncle. Hi, Aunty. Some kids were trying to do a bakery here. And this is that freshly baked bread. And this we just want to gift you as a welcome gift. If you like it, drink right to us. Give us feedback. We didn't even have a wave, you know, we had a phone number, but there was no real way to take orders. And also we said, let us know if it is a good or a bad bread. What do you think about it? And that's it.
00:12:27
Speaker
And I remember, I think we did almost around 1000 houses like this, right? Across groups, complexes, kept doing it. And even today, 10 days, some of those customers actually still remember us. I think you were those people who came in the evening and gave us feedback. You were the one. But that experience,
00:12:48
Speaker
And I still remember we started getting calls like, oh, that seeded bread was what took me back to Europe. And that kind of customer feedback is something which was very different.
00:13:01
Speaker
that kind of kickstarted the sales. Aditya, what did you decide as the products? What was the range that
Product Launch and Expansion
00:13:08
Speaker
you launched with? We started at the range of about six to seven breads and we tried to keep a mix. We had the regular sliced bread too because obviously that is something we all are very familiar with and we all grew up eating.
00:13:19
Speaker
But I also wanted to have a range of sourdoughs because obviously that is what I fell in love with. And so we tried to have a mix of, let's say, a whole bit of multigrain around here, a couple of sourdoughs, a French one, a German one. We kept some Italian Chewbacca's and forgot yours. There were about six, seven items on our menu.
00:13:37
Speaker
But I think from day one, what was very clear is I loved the German sourdough, which we call the 4-grain. Although I used to bake all of it, I had a very clear favorite. And if someone would walk into the store, I would only sell that to them. Instead, there were times when the customer would buy something else, not be like, auntie, 4-grain bread, trust me, but you have to take it.
00:13:58
Speaker
somewhere very well knowing that once you taste my pho grain, there is no way you would eat any other bread. And yes, I mean, I'm happy to take anything else from my bakery, but I'm really, really happy to take my pho grain. This pho grain, was it like that round, roundish kind of that?
00:14:14
Speaker
We made it in a oval shape, but very similar to what you're visualizing, where it's crusty. And we wanted the first few bakeries to put lots of seeds, not just on the top, but also in the inside. So you've got these seeded breads at that point, which will basically like a whole wheat bread rolled in seeds. Yeah, yeah. But we used to add a huge chunk of the inside because that's where the real crunch in the flavor and texture comes from. And I think
00:14:41
Speaker
Because when we started this business, I was a baker by heart. When we would develop a recipe, it was really designed to be a good recipe or something. I would want to feed my own mom. And what it landed up costing never mattered. So we always sit till day that the baker's does and the R&D department does not look at costing at all. They develop a product keeping whatever is the right thing to do. It's cheap, it's cheap, if it's expensive, it's expensive, it doesn't matter.
00:15:08
Speaker
And we always believed that whatever we need to charge the market to make business sense, the consumer will be willing to pay, purely because we're doing a good, honest job out there. And I think, I think customers pick up on that very, very quickly. So what was that the full-grain Sado price set? So this is a very interesting story. When we started, it was priced at 120. 120 in 2013 was not a cheap brand. We were probably one of the most expensive brands.
00:15:34
Speaker
And we were selling this for a few months. And I remember, I think four or five months into our store opening, we had three stores at that point. We had one store in Brahma Devi, one at Kemp's Corner, and one in Bandra. And Sne came back to me one day, doing all the bats, saying, listen, this Britain is actually making a loss for us, not money.
00:15:53
Speaker
And like Sneh mentioned, to be a self-funded company, so making a profit was extremely important. And he says, we have only two options, either I have to hike up the price or we have to discontinue the brand. And discontinuing the brand made no sense to me because I mean, I didn't even want to sell it. I just wanted to give it away. But obviously, we always need to, need to earn a living. So, you know, some revenue needs to come.
00:16:15
Speaker
So I said, okay, how much do you want to price this at approximately? So he says that we had about 135, 140 should be comfortable keeping the variation of prices in the market and so on. So I said, okay, cool. Let me figure a way around it.
00:16:32
Speaker
store these three stores, I wind up every day for a week. And I would just stand at the corner of the shop waiting for a customer to come and pick up a fork ring. And when he or she would pick up this fork ring, I would narrate the story to them that saying, listen, this bread is not making money right now. I will need you to stop it and hike the price. What sort of price are you comfortable paying? I just wanted to understand if we increase it by 15 rupees with a consumer pay for it or not, because it was already, I think, quite high price.
00:17:00
Speaker
Exactly. And I think I must have spoken to about 50, 60-odd customers in that one week. I don't think even one of them got back to me with an MRP. They said, Aditi, put whatever value you want to put to it. Just ensure you don't compromise on the quality of it.
00:17:16
Speaker
There was this one husband who was probably trying to act smart and come up with some numbers. And he was quickly shushed by his wife saying, and I think after this entire discussion, we ran into pricing close to about 150. And today the spread is priced at about 210 or 215 or something like that. And not even a single day has happened where no sales have come down because of the price because the product has always been
00:17:44
Speaker
And it's become only better with time. So that's why I think we got very, very lucky with our customers. So what kind of, what was your first month when you opened that store? What was that like?
00:18:00
Speaker
The first five, six months, we used to do a lot of business on pre-orders, which meant 10 noobs a day, 12 noobs a day, 15 noobs a day. On the day of the store opening, we said about 150 people will come, so about 150 breads will go. We sold about 500 units. We hadn't baked that much. I had to leave the launch and go back to the kitchen to start baking so that we had more bread to sell.
00:18:26
Speaker
But if I look back at the figures now, I think we were doing a revenue of, I can't remember, maybe 20, 30, 40,000 a month, 50,000 a month, maximum of that. I think there were only 20 figures like that. But were you recovering rent from the sales? Was it breaking even the first store?
00:18:46
Speaker
a little bit of loss, a little bit of break-even, not a lot of profit on and off. So I think at the end of the year, we were probably close to a margin in loss and just in break-even, something like that. Why go from one to three so fast? Like you told me, a couple of months, you went to three. Yeah. So we opened our first store right from Hadevi in March 2012. And we said, okay, one store, we will make our name in Bombay for the next five years, then we will think of the future.
00:19:15
Speaker
And the store opening was a huge hit and we didn't invite friends and family. We invited all our customers and we sent them little postcards in the opening. Can you please come? And there is no obligation for a customer to come to the store, right? Friends and family, they have to turn up the store opening. It wasn't one of those sorts of things.
00:19:33
Speaker
So the first day of the store opening in Pravadevi was such a huge hit. We were expecting maybe 150 odd people, but about 500 of them turned up. And there was a huge line outside our store. And this is when we really did zero marketing and low PR. And I think the launch was so successful and we were in such a high for that launch.
00:19:51
Speaker
And we said, OK, listen, we should open a second store. Because at the end of the day, bread is a very local product. You want it in a 1, 2, 3 kilometer radius. You can't travel from one end to the other. And I think on the launch date, since we decided, OK, we're going to open a second store, either it's Kemp's or not at Banffrum. And really, that decision was going to be based on where we would find a store earlier. That was it. And then the second opened, and then you said, hey, this is doing great. So a third opened, and the fourth opened.
00:20:19
Speaker
Effectively, that's no journey we had. So maybe, Sneh, you could talk about the numbers. What kind of numbers did you do in the first year? How many stores were there? Tell me about that growth trajectory. So in the first year, we ended with around three of our own stores by the end of first year. This was Bandra, Kebbs Corner, Prabhadevi. And we were doing approximately all three combined. We were doing around, you know,
00:20:45
Speaker
4, 5, 6 lakhs a month kind of figure depending on the month. So, all of that was great and that's when what we realized is that this is such a neighborhood product. Because we started getting a lot of people saying that I still in Lokhandwala.
00:21:03
Speaker
But I can't come to Bandra every day for bread. I actually can't go from Lokan when I'm on the street, which is next street for bread. So how do I get your bread? Now it's also... Why you are going from delivery at that time? We have started with... But again, that is still limited, right? That's a radius. Even I cannot deliver bread from Bandra to Lokan whether it will not make sense.
00:21:29
Speaker
We don't pay for delivery. We don't like to pay for shit. Even if you have a 400 rupees dish, that 20 rupees for delivery always irritates us. Then we said that there has to be a way to take this product to more locality. And that's when we actually got into our tie-ups with modern trade and the retails.
00:21:50
Speaker
So that's when we started with nature's basket, with food oil, with Hyper City, Star Bazaar, all of these guys. What happened over there was interesting as to how we got in, right? So if you ask any FMCC brand, the thing is, when you go to these retailers, they'll ask for margin, they'll ask for listing fees, they'll ask for marketing support, x, y, z, right?
00:22:17
Speaker
In our case, what started happening was that the path management of these retailers started becoming direct customers from our stores. So I still remember the star of India and he was staying near Colaba somewhere, right? And he wrote to his category people that my family is having this spread from this new brand every day. And why don't our stores have it?
00:22:43
Speaker
And what happens is when the chat box writes an email, you are kind of put up to the radar the next day, right? You know, suddenly we had like people coming that know we need a product, figure it out, figure it out. So gradually those tie-ups started happening, Akshay. And you still had one small back office baking setup. Yeah, yeah. So there was, there was like within the thousand square feet, there was our small 50 square feet office, there was the manufacturing.
00:23:09
Speaker
Everything was there. There was a three-wheeler tent that we actually started with for delivery. Very, very classic. That kind of story, right? But Maven grade is where we realized, okay, now this is something which can go to beyond one or two localities.
00:23:31
Speaker
And what started happening is, I remember hypo in Hawaii, for example, that became even a bigger store for us than our own stores, right? On some days.
00:23:42
Speaker
because of the shared profiles that that store would receive. And that's when our entire, I think, almost 2013 to 2015, that journey was a lot of this expansion across Bombay. Today also, we are the biggest partners for Nijas Basket Pan India on a bakery segment for our food hall as a branded bakery. Right? So those relationships have stayed with us over time. And that's how we expanded, at least in Bombay, Pune.
00:24:11
Speaker
This was like selling under your brand or you were rebranding it? With Nature's Basket for initial one or two years, we were doing their private labeling. It was like a co-branded thing. It was made for Nature's Basket by them. But say, if you once you realize that you actually the fun isn't the brand, right? It was in that the name that people start recognizing
00:24:38
Speaker
I, around that time, 2015, I had gone for one of those midnight stifling things in Bombay, right? It leaves at around 12 Ram gateway and you go to Bandra and you come back and, you know, for whatever reason, right? I should remember a friend of ours and it was a group of 10 or 15 folks, random folks, you've never met them in life, right? And there was a point where we were all introducing each other and I just said to the big fellas, and I still remember there was like one person who said, oh, I know you that brand,
00:25:10
Speaker
In a random group of 15 strangers in Bombay, somebody knows us. So that's when we realized. So when did you scale up your supply side, your manufacturing? And maybe Aditi can talk about the supply scale up.
Scaling Production and Innovation
00:25:28
Speaker
So I think actually we were doing it right from day one. Like I said, the first day it was one shop and three months down the line, the second shop, we took this thousand square feet of property on rent and within about two and a half years, we were actually running short of space. But we were just being a bit more produced and we said, okay, six more months, we will somehow manage, we will produce out of the same space corners how? And in about three and a half to four years. And like at its peak, how much was coming out of that thousand square foot place?
00:25:57
Speaker
How many loaves a day? Those sort of numbers I won't even remember right now, but it was maybe a few thousand, not even like 10,000 really, like a few thousand, yeah. That's quite a big number for like such a small place. You must have like really had to optimize every space. So we know the congestion thing is the
00:26:23
Speaker
dare of it as because when you're self-funded, now you would really become very, very frugal in everything. And you become more and less sensitive to a point of annoyance that this doesn't make sense. So I think we did a lot of optimizing like that.
00:26:36
Speaker
In fact, four years online, we said, listen, this is really not working out for us. We need a much bigger space. Otherwise, we just want a bigger product hit now. And then we moved to our 5000 square feet facility in Navi, Mumbai. And this was an industrial area. We also needed to be a place that is more industrial oriented because we used to work through the night shift and where we initially were, there were more offices around and so on. And I think this was early 2016, where we moved to a 5000 square feet facility in Navi, Mumbai.
00:27:05
Speaker
And sometime in the later 2017, we were running short of that space too. Instead, I remember on the Sundays, they were there to figure out that we needed to break a wall and extend it to a bigger packing room and all of it. And all of these are rented properties, right? So you are like, because every seven infrastructure in the rented properties effectively down the train.
00:27:27
Speaker
We just keep moving everything. We said we want to spend 15 lakh rupees on making a bigger packing room. Let us just put up our own factory and spend a few crores instead.
00:27:39
Speaker
And it sounds very ridiculous with the motivation to put up a factory in Abbottabad, which cost us close to about 5 crores, was to save the 15 racks. So we didn't want to spend on a couple of walls. But at that point, we said we are growing faster than what we think. And we will need some space which is more manufacturing friendly, not in this terms of the size of the place, but also in terms of the manpower.
00:28:01
Speaker
And we had a lot of empty space like that. So we said it's more plant but the job is far more friendly in terms of power and power and so on. But now the problem was how will they make bread in Ahmedabad and sell it pan India?
00:28:18
Speaker
because everything that we made right from day one was without any preservatives. So we had one, two, three days shelves like maximum on bread. And our cakes were about four or five days, no more than that. And we said, how can we have a central manufacturing unit and supply pan in India? We also discussed having different manufacturing units, maybe one small in Bombay, one in Hyderabad, one in Bangalore.
00:28:38
Speaker
But our product is all handmade. It has no preservatives. It has no stabilizers. So the quality of the flour is very, very important. And a consistent quality of the flour is very important. The way we hand shape it, the consistency in shaping it in this process is very important. And I always wanted the manufacturing unit in a consolidated way where I can keep an eye on a daily basis and track it and train it.
00:29:00
Speaker
So I think it was very clear that this product had to be a sane quality pan and we had to have central manufacturing. Now, the question was, how do you tackle a thing of shelf size? So that is when we went around the world trying to figure out, you know, as entrepreneurs, one of the things we always know is when you face a problem, you're probably not the first one to face this problem. Someone has experienced exactly the same thing, if not, a
00:29:25
Speaker
version close to it. So a good thing is to go and hunt out different answer and then modify it for your situation. So we went here and there and we figured out this packaging technology called modified atmosphere packaging. Now this packaging technology is not something new in India though the pack of chips that we buy, the paneer that we buy is effectively the same thing where it has a barrier film so oxygen doesn't enter and there is no oxygen inside the pack. They flush it with nitrogen or similar inert gases.
00:29:53
Speaker
We were going to be the first ones to do this packaging technology in the industry of bakery. So what you were buying in the cities or Puneet.
00:30:02
Speaker
or even chocolate, did that matter in some of them, we were going to load in bread. And one of the questions was that, why are we the first ones to load this in bread? Why has nobody else done this now? Because we couldn't be that smart, right? And the logic or our rationale behind it is this packaging is very expensive. So if it cost me, let's say, 15 rupees to make a bread, it cost me, honest, 15 rupees to pack it.
00:30:26
Speaker
Now, as per industry standard, this ratio is not right. It doesn't make sense. But what this packaging technology meant was that means you have a consistent product, you have a handmade product, and you have no preservatives, which to me is a very, very important thing to do because bread by nature is something you will eat every day. Bread by nature is something very tedious to do at home, and a product that you eat every day, which you can't make at home, and if you have to buy it from the market, it should be healthy. It should be hygiene-like.
00:30:54
Speaker
And it should not kill the nutrition that you're consuming. So we said, you know what? I think our consumers will understand this. So if it's going to cost us more to make a product, we are going to pass on that cost to our consumer. But hopefully it's only 10, 15, 20 rupees, which is quite insignificant for the value of health that one pays. And our consumers will accept it. And I think we are very, very lucky that way. Whenever we wanted to experiment around with things that consumers have been very, very adjusting and accommodating and actually appreciative of what we do.
00:31:24
Speaker
and this packaging, people responded to it quite well in the sense where they said if TOP, we see the logic.
00:31:30
Speaker
But where there was also a little bit of reluctance from them was that, listen, it's very plastic heavy. All your packaging till now has been like butter paper, parchment paper. This is very, very plastic heavy and then bothers us because when you see a brand like the Baker's dozen, which talks about honest product, why is that not translating into your packaging? And this was a very, very genuine concern they had. And to us, very frankly, it was an emotional call. Either you will have a preservative based product or you will have something which is plastic heavy.
00:31:58
Speaker
Once I put the preservative in, there is nothing I can do in terms of quality. But if I generate more plastic waste, there are several practices we've done and the baker doesn't to find a way to try to offset it as much as we can, whether it's recycling our waste, whether it's making a manual out of the food waste we get, and so on. So it was an emotional point we set and we certainly did score with this packaging. Where this rationale really played out well for us is we started this in January 2019.
00:32:27
Speaker
You'll be spending six months trying to explain this to a customer from our point of view. But obviously, these things happen organically. Then March 2020, when the pandemic hit and lockdowns happened and we all got so scared about buying anything from the market. Everybody wanted to buy this product because it was so friendly, sanitizer friendly. You put a bucket of water
00:32:51
Speaker
And I think what also happened is that for almost 8 years or so, we were harkening about hygiene and bread, more than health and bread, right from the first 1,000 square feet facility we had in Varana. And we basically described it was really small and compact. But we used to still call our customers and vloggers to the kitchen and we just liked showing it off. We were always very proud of our manufacturing unit.
00:33:15
Speaker
And we would always look at the hygiene of the way we do things, the uniforms, the cleanliness of the bowls, the work surfaces. So when you're hard for and about hygiene for eight years for no rhyme or reason, which is so different than what the industry does, and then something like the pandemic happens, people automatically think of you first. And they said it seems like a good idea to get a baker's in front of it right now because
00:33:41
Speaker
They've been talking about hygiene when nobody was talking about hygiene when it came to bread. And I think post 2020 is when I think our business really, really took off. We were growing, but not in the kind of scale you're growing now. If I had to talk in terms of numbers, so...
00:34:00
Speaker
If you like to hear stories of founders, then we have tons of great stories from entrepreneurs who have built billion-dollar businesses. Just search for the Founder Thesis podcast on any audio streaming app like Spotify, Ghana, Apple Podcasts, and subscribe to the show.
00:34:21
Speaker
Okay, so like before, like if you could talk of a sense of numbers right from 13 onwards, 13 you were doing 4-5 lakhs a month was what
Financial Growth and E-commerce Expansion
00:34:31
Speaker
they said. So we were Akshay from almost 2013 till 2019. We were growing every year, but the growth would be let's say 1 crore year, 1, 2 crores year, 2, 3 crores. So it was very...
00:34:45
Speaker
you know from a percentage by the growth might seem high but from our overall brand growth and 2018-19 financial we actually were at around six and a half crores of revenue. So at that time it was the family friends kind of did some internal bootstrapping.
00:35:07
Speaker
Correct but it was more of a bet for the future at that time and that's where we were right but 1920 was also around the same level around 7 crores but 2021 actually we did around 17 crores of net revenue
00:35:23
Speaker
From up from seven now twenty one twenty two we should be doing around thirty crores of net revenue and I've been here at level we're almost touching around forty forty five today as on the so it's it's always the last two years has been a five hundred percent growth in a wave from a six and a half to a to a thirty five forty crore level right now.
00:35:45
Speaker
And for me, see, I always bring the PVD journey into two parts, right? Actually, there is a 2013 to almost end up 2018, 2019, when we were just learning from a lot of mistakes. So initially, we tried to scale up beyond Bombay too fast, if we started
00:36:04
Speaker
sending stuff by air to Bangalore. One day, it will make sense. And that time, sometimes you just feel like, okay, the customer demand, can I try to fulfill it? Those things, right? And we had thoughts of multiple manufacturing facilities. I think there was a lot of trials and errors that we did. Also, a lot of work during that time. So no one had ever thought of centralizing bakery manufacturing. No one had ever thought of the innovative packaging technique used in breads.
00:36:32
Speaker
In india right no one at all but producing in one corner and you know taking it like today i'll stop goes from amnibar to calcutta. It goes to berry it goes to bangalore right it's the same product that is going everywhere i think two thousand twenty on which is when all that started paying off and.
00:36:51
Speaker
If we had only seen the last three years, I don't think we would have learned from those. I think those earlier years had a very formative impact on the brand. I think they really taught us what to do and even what not to do. But the last three years has been truly a journey for us.
00:37:07
Speaker
When did you guys start taking home salaries? When did the business reach that level where you were comfortable taking out money? I think around 2017-18 approximately. And I think that was also because somebody told us that if you can't take your own salary, you said that they're fundamentally wrong. And see, for me, I can find my background in terms of engineering, IAM, etc. Now you're suddenly your entire cohort.
00:37:33
Speaker
Now talking at a different level 5-7 years down the line. Sometimes you really start questioning. Is this bet worth it? And in our case both were in the same basket. It was not that I was doing something else or Aditi was doing something else. So there had been a lot of those questions through the journey. I would say I was 17, 18, 19. I think those years were really tough in a way of the questions on the overall business.
00:38:01
Speaker
And is it something which we want to do for the longer term? I guess when you would have gone out to raise that round, people must have really questioned you a lot at that stage. So that was a tough period, definitely. We knew we were doing the right things, but the results hadn't started coming. It's hard to justify putting in five crores when your top line is six crores. Yeah, yeah.
00:38:27
Speaker
yeah so that it was it was it was a bet and i think a combination that
00:38:33
Speaker
the errors from the pandemic, which kind of changed happened. And somebody told me, you can be in the wrong place at the right time, right place at the wrong time, but one day you'll be at the right place at the right time. And that's what in a way happened to us. And I think that's what pushed us the last two, three years. How did your sales channels evolve over the years? So you had those three stores in Bombay and then you had these tie-ups with Modern Trade. How did that evolve? Like, did you get into additional distribution channels?
00:39:02
Speaker
So we started doing econ partners. We were one of the first bakery brands actually on big basket when it started. So you see, we have always been omnichannel even before that concept came up, right? If there is a customer in any locality, I need to be able to serve him. And bread is such a product, even if, for example, we have customers who stay in Bandra,
00:39:24
Speaker
But for them, still delivery is better because one, you have to go to a store if they deliver. And secondly, it is not an experienced product once you know what you like. It's a very rapid purchase product. It's a very loyal product. I love the croissant, Aditi might love the bagel and she'll be learning about that all the time and I'll only have the croissant all the time.
00:39:47
Speaker
Now for that we don't need to visit a store. So econ started building a lot and actually today from a pure distribution standpoint, we are our products are present in almost 20 cities. We have our own combination of
00:40:02
Speaker
Brand stores and delivery only stores across almost eight to nine cities. We are there. We are there on every modern-grade or e-com platform you can think of, including all the quick commerce guys, right? So whether it is Instagram, LinkedIn.
00:40:19
Speaker
Lepto, Danzo, Nijaz basket, big basket, all the milk basket. You name it, generally we are there. And we are the only, I would say, at a premium or slightly quality level, I call it a bakery brand, Acura City, Acura of these platforms. Otherwise, your competitors would be local brands. Like there's nobody at the national level who's competing at your price point.
00:40:45
Speaker
And that helped us a lot. Like today, for example, we get mails. My customers think that earlier I was in Bombay for five years, I should love your product. Now I've shifted to Goodbye. But thank you, I'm still getting the same product, right? So that consistency of supply and the product being easily available. That is what
00:41:05
Speaker
that makes the difference. That for us now, going forward, the back end in terms of the product, the manufacturing capability, that all is there, is just as to how quickly can we take this to further cities, right? So what is your sales distribution split? Like how much comes from the channel? Like how much from online? How much from like those fast delivery companies? How much from modern trade? Like what does that split look like?
00:41:33
Speaker
So 30% of our sales actually comes from the online, the e-commerce universe. Now that would include your quick delivery guys. It will also include players like Big Basket and anybody. So I would clap the entire e-commerce sales into that. And that percentage, by the way, has shut up from 20, 15, 20% two years ago to 40% today.
00:41:55
Speaker
So that shift has been quite drastic. Which is also a reflection of these players putting in tons of money and getting aggressive to acquire customers. So their spend on customer acquisition is in a way benefiting you.
00:42:11
Speaker
And also actually just the pure, sheer scales, right? See today, for a brick and water retailer, it is still, it takes time to build cities, to grow, right? Now for whatever reason, but these guys, they are in a great hurry as well. So we generally, when we are talking of launching, it's not launch in one city or something. It's like, okay, can we start in 10 cities? And then we'll see the next 10 later, right? So that's the 30%. 30% scale comes from our own stores, which we are very happy about because
00:42:41
Speaker
in a way that the true D2C sense in a way. This includes both our brand stores and today we have almost 50 delivery-only stores in India. These are very neighborhood-specific stores where you can order from our website, apps, wiki, somato, any of these.
00:43:00
Speaker
And then the remaining 30% is mostly modern trade and a few select general trade, good corner shops that I would call them. So that's the broad split. So is there like, do you also want to start taking orders through your own brand website and stuff like that? Like a D2C place? Yeah.
00:43:19
Speaker
We already do. We actually take orders from our website and we also have our own app. We are in the process of revamping those. They are not the most optimized website app today, but we are actually in the process of completely revamping those and making it much more customer friendly. So that's something which we are heavily investing in and pushing towards.
00:43:42
Speaker
And will D2C economics work for you? I mean typically D2C economics is like 25% is your customer acquisition cost only. So will that work for you? And then you have cost of product, cost of delivery. So two reasons why I feel we should push for that actually. One is this is a very high repeat category. Once I've acquired you and once you're used to our bread or cake or
00:44:09
Speaker
cookies for that matter. So we all grew up, like, you know, I was in Bombay, I grew up eating bread for 20 years of my life thinking that was the best bread that was there. I am being very honest about it. But that's how this category is a very, very high repeat category. So there will be an initial cost to acquire a customer, but for me, its value is much higher. Lifetime value is higher. Correct.
00:44:33
Speaker
Correct. And second, second also, see, we feel our website, our app, it serves a dual purpose. Yes. You know, there is sales link to it, but that's also the place where the customer experience is. Now the same customer, let's say if you're in Noida, for example, right? I don't have a store over there. If you get, you know, enthusiastic about, through our blogs, through our videos, through the website content,
00:44:57
Speaker
For you, selecting our brand from the options available on your e-commerce partners is something which becomes much easier, right? So, I think there's a genuine case to push for that direct brand connect with the customers. And for us, that can play out in the way we don't differentiate between our website customer or a customer on milk basket who chooses our product.
00:45:22
Speaker
So essentially you're looking at this as spend on digital branding rather than digital sales. Yes. In our past history, especially for the last one, two years, from a performance marketing point of view, we have still been able to make returns on it even from a direct point of view. But I think that the returns are much higher when you start accounting for the brand report.
00:45:46
Speaker
That gets paid. Right. How much of your sales is from your own D2C website? So from our store sales, it's approximately around 30 to 40% that comes from. So this I include our website, our work is into our brand stores, call deliveries, everybody.
00:46:08
Speaker
Are you planning to raise funds and like, to really build a brand you need to spend on marketing, right?
Future Growth and Product Range
00:46:16
Speaker
Probably you need like a celebrity endorsement and stuff like that. And you need some Bollywood actors eating your bread or actress.
00:46:23
Speaker
So you would need to go down that route because now you have the ability to scale up your production. So you need to spend on scaling up demand. So are you planning to do a fund raise for that? Yes. So actually we are in the world for that, Akshay. So it is something which is in progress right now. Today we are very clear what do we need the funds for, right? And how do we see this business growing? Because as you said, now it's no longer experiments in terms of
00:46:52
Speaker
the product or the packaging or the range also for that matter. It's about building the brand and it's about just reaching those customers whom we have not been able to reach today. Whether it is by city, by bin codes, whatever criteria you might take. And the idea is very simple. Let's take this brand and make it a national brand available across not only metros, so anecdotal example that we supplied to one retail store in Rajkot.
00:47:21
Speaker
near amdabad and those kinds so they're part of a chain based out of amdabad so they take a product from amdabad themselves and that does more sales than any of our stores in amdabad. Now you would think Rajkot would be willing to spend yes the product mix might change a bit I'm not contesting that right but from a pure
00:47:43
Speaker
ability to spend and to look for high quality products i think that requirement in the city is even higher and you take any criteria whether it is available disposable income whatever the cities are prime for growth right now so why can't we be there so you're looking at like a series a like five million.
00:48:03
Speaker
Approximately 5 to 7 million. Now, frankly, the series, in our case, we have been telling that you're not. So you can call it for whatever it takes. But yeah, a kind of a series. So tell me about the product range. So you had like, initially you had six SKUs when you launched. What is the number of SKUs you have today? What all do you do now? In the year 2015 now,
00:48:31
Speaker
this was almost two and a half years into selling bread. I felt that we finally have a good grip with bread and we kind of established our name with bread. And I felt now I'm ready to learn how to make cakes. We used to get a lot of requests from customers, make brownies, make cupcakes, make cakes. And although I knew how to make it, I had never officially studied it. And I really, really realized the value of
00:48:55
Speaker
being technically strong in your product. To take a recipe book and make something and sell it is very easy. But if you technically understand why you bring what you're doing, how do the ingredients react with each other, you have a totally different game on your hands now. And mid-2015 now is when I knew it's needed. I think now I want to go and learn how to make cakes. And that's when I went to Lykadon Bloor & Faris to learn our pedestrian. And when I came back in December, 2015, we started a range of cakes.
00:49:23
Speaker
Now the challenge here was everything I had learnt was with a lot of chocolate and butter and banache and icing, which meant a perishable, which meant it has to be in a fridge, which meant extremely difficult logistics and supply chain. And that wasn't really fitting in well with the kind of business plan we had in mind.
00:49:42
Speaker
And we said, okay, in that phase, why don't we give it stupidity? Let's not just do it the way everybody thinks of you. So that's when we came across, let's make tea cakes. I mean, tea cakes is something my mom used to eat a lot when I was a little kid. So I'd already seen so much of it. And I was like, okay, I think this makes a lot of sense. And the first cake that we ever launched was a banana bread.
00:50:02
Speaker
We didn't want to do the typical conventional chocolate strawberry vanilla, so we said we do something different. One of the reasons to also pick a banana bread was it's the first cake I used to make this thing, but we had started eating. So every time we would come to meet, I would make a banana bread. It only made sense that the first cake coming out of the baker's dozen kitchen should be
00:50:33
Speaker
about 100, 150, 150 grams, those sort of things. We changed the sizes in that over a period of time. But again, a lot of them are real fresh fruit cakes. And the banana bread is made from actual bananas. We have a fresh orange cake, which is made from orange juice. So we always try to keep the original fruit in it. We don't substitute it with the essences or extracts. Now, a big chunk of this range is also gold-baked.
00:50:45
Speaker
A product like that and that's how we got into the city and what was the what is the pricing for the game.
00:50:58
Speaker
So we went from making a banana bread in Meddha to making a banana bread with 100% whole wheat. We always had a little team just doing some already in the product with the fun of it. They have no deliverables that we need to make a product which I need to sell just to play around. And as part of our playing around time, we came up with a very good product for the Rangi crackers. This was one of those things, early days job, you know, Dindi Pachissi played a lot of time to experiment.
00:51:23
Speaker
So one night at about four or five in the morning, me and my makers were like, okay, I have to push any banana. And we came across some recipes. We did our own thing and we made a product called ragi crackers, which is made from ragi, which are in roasted garlic. It is probably our biggest hit put up in the stacks that day. So then you can look at it to add more to it. So we made some davash, we made some breadsticks, but on the tip of the breadsticks, we added some roasted garlic and chili.
00:51:51
Speaker
We did stuff like that again in August 2019. It's going to be set in now. They just also have an endless range of cakes because all our cakes could date the eggs and obviously there's a huge demand for endless cakes. And whilst we were developing endless cakes,
00:52:07
Speaker
Especially in Gujarat. Yes, especially in Gujarat, true. But you see, there's a huge demand for eggless cakes here in South Bombay. South Bombay, I think, for the whole world, you know, Gujaratis and Marwari, there's a huge demand at that region of Bombay too. Whilst you were experimenting with that, we started making some cookies.
00:52:23
Speaker
I don't know, maybe we would have forgotten what happened. And we said, yeah, this seems interesting. Cookies is interesting. So then we started our own range of cookies, which gives us our full port, because we have breads, we have snacks like lavash and crackers. We have cookies.
00:52:38
Speaker
And we have cakes, obviously. What we also did in 2019, when we shifted our factory from Bombay to Ahmedabad, and we had to re-do all the recipes because the jar was going to change. We took six months to do R&B, not only to re-do the recipes, but we said, can we make everything 100% whole wheat? Until then, we were doing a blend of R&B and we said, can we just have whole wheat? And no matter what's going to happen, let's try.
00:53:06
Speaker
And I think as part of an R&D activity now effectively, other than now, Prasam and Briosh, every red on our venues are 100% whole wheat. We also converted some of our peaks into 100% whole wheat. So now the way our product development works is not necessarily adding a new SKU.
00:53:23
Speaker
But making the current one better. How did you navigate initially while you were in Bombay? You might have had maybe 10 makers. Today, maybe you have hundreds of people in the factory. What kind of headcount do you have in the factory? We are at close to 160 people at the plant now.
00:53:42
Speaker
When we started this plant in January 2019, we were close to about 40 people, 35-40 approximately like that. Which was the WWE staff? No. Some of them from WWE went by about five, seven of them because they had to relocate to about seven of them shifted. We hired about 25 people locally from here. And when I said 35-40, now I've included all the departments, your production, your packaging, your hygiene, your choppy, everything's in this. So that's how small we were in 2019.
00:54:12
Speaker
I have a friend who's in the manufacturing setup and generally when we chat, his biggest complaints are always about labor issues. How do you manage it? How did you learn to manage and build up a manufacturing setup?
Workforce and Production Challenges
00:54:28
Speaker
I don't think there's been a single day at the plant and I'm not trying to show where we've had labor issues. There are some things that happen here and there.
00:54:34
Speaker
I would not even call them labor issues, to be honest. We are very lucky. Whatever we do, whether it's a product, whether it's the way we treat our people, we have a certain value system and we follow that irrespective of what may happen.
00:54:51
Speaker
When we put up our plant at Amityvat, this is not even actually in Amityvat, it's one and a bay in Kedah district and in the middle of a village. So to get manpower here from Amityvat is also not the most viable option because it's about a one and a half hour commute each way.
00:55:07
Speaker
So we had no other option but to hire stock locally. Now, the way I always look at it is that when I went to New York to learn bread, I did not even know the ABC of bread. And my chefs could train me in two months and make me into a decent baker at that point. Now, obviously, my chefs are great features. I've still not reached that. There is maybe only a year or two years, but I genuinely believe that if there is someone out there who's dedicated and aren't working,
00:55:35
Speaker
and who can pick up a 25KG in Goni or Pata, you can become a baker. You just need the right people to train you. And that's when we got really lucky that when we started hiring people, that's what we do with everyone. That is when you will get a job here at the factory. You are unskilled right now. But we will train you in whatever department you are in. It's the IT department of production or packaging. And we are hoping that you're down the line, you are skilled staff, and not just for us, but you're an asset to your own self. So you are more hireable in the market out there.
00:56:05
Speaker
And I think that's a philosophy we've done in Vegas doesn't write from 2013.
00:56:09
Speaker
purely because we could not find good bakers. So we had another option but to develop good bakers. And I feel when you take care of people like that, when you train, when you give them a livelihood, they don't leave you, no matter what. Instead, when the first lockdown happened, there are so many of my friends and family who were plants, who were factories around, and they all had labor issues in the lockdown. Other than Janta, I thought they would leave them open every day.
00:56:35
Speaker
And we did not have anyone saying that listen, we did not turn up because it was the first time we were going to get to serve our nation in a time of crisis, in a time of snail. And we wanted to be the best we could. So we turned up at a work every day. I remember free pandemic. We were at about 60, 65 feet the start strength.
00:56:55
Speaker
We hired about 50 people during the first lockdown itself because that's how fast we were growing. Hiding meant jolly fast training. We brought in a lot of stuff that you study on Henry Ford and the way he does manufacturing. We've got a lot of things like that in our manufacturing to streamline, to make consistent products, to train people faster, to convert them from unskilled to skilled.
00:57:21
Speaker
So touchwood stuff like that has meant very little, no labor issues for us. Wow, amazing. And what is your current number of loads? Obviously, you do a lot more now, just to understand the group. We now produce close to about 15,000 loads a day, approximately. And very frankly, I think we could produce much more. Right now, we just need to build up more capacity at the plant to be able to cater to all the customers that we are getting. So we're in the process of doing that.
00:57:50
Speaker
What is the constraint? Is it machine? Is it manpower? Or is it space? Now it's a little bit of machine and space. So we are trying to wrap that up in the next few months to be able to get into the peak that we will experience towards the end of the year. Why is end of the year a peak?
00:58:05
Speaker
So during October, November, December, your festive period, your Diwali, your Christmas is always more better. I don't know, suddenly what happens, people just eat so much, people are so happy. And it makes sure that even bread consumption goes up, people are completely entertaining. All Christmas time, everyone's just happier towards the end of the day. So at this point of the year, it's going to be build capacity for the end of the year.
00:58:29
Speaker
So you're like expanding your factory? Yes. Or you already have the space and you're... We already have the space. Now we have to do some seven expenses there and we have to import the equipment because all the equipment we get is from France and Sweden. So it takes about four to six months for that capacity to be installed. I remember this becoming a problem during the second wave where we were called in Switzerland and Sweden saying we are equipmented, there is no lockdown. And I'm like, what lockdown are we going to work in? You guys work just 70th hour spent in the machine.
00:58:59
Speaker
And the best thing actually to add to that was when the lockdown opened, they decided to go on that annual summer break because that was pending. We are not taking it, but summer is gone now. Okay. So by when do you think you'll be a 100 CR brand? Two years from now, I guess, like you're already at 40 CR analyzed.
00:59:19
Speaker
Yeah. So two years would be the outer limit for that. And we see, we see a clear part to that. So as I said, right, it's not only more like city expansion in that more newer platforms, the TTC push from our own website app, we are also inherently getting a lot of interest from for export.
00:59:39
Speaker
especially neighboring countries like your Dubai and Singapore and all. We might not do all the categories over there but at least we will look at especially let's say the cakes or the cookies those categories because there is a product gap over there. So I think 100 should be something which easily we are looking at in the next two years maybe even higher.
Conclusion and Call to Action
01:00:00
Speaker
If you like the Found A Thesis podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like marketing, technology, career advice, books and drama. Visit the podium.in that is thepodim.in for a complete list of all our shows.
01:00:21
Speaker
Before we end the episode, I want to share a bit about my journey as a podcaster. I started podcasting in 2020 and in the last two years, I've had the opportunity to interview more than 250 founders who are shaping India's future across sectors. If you also want to speak to the best minds in your field and build an enviable network, then you must consider becoming a podcaster.
01:00:45
Speaker
And the first step to becoming a podcaster starts with Zencaster, which takes care of all the nuts and bolts of podcasting, from remote recording to editing to distribution and finally monetization. If you are planning to check out the platform, then please show your support for the founder thesis podcast by using this link zen.ai founder thesis. That's zen.ai founder thesis.