Can iD Fresh's batter business solve Indian homemakers 'trust' issues?

In the digital world, there is no escape from memes, pet videos, food porn, and of course WhatsApp forwards. People have made headlines with these viral formats of content. For Musthafa PC, a video that was meant to be showcased at Harvard got ‘leaked’ and clocked an impressive number of views prompting the 45 year old founder of iD Fresh to fast-track the launch of its vada batter.

iD Fresh, one of the newest players in the ready-to-cook space, sells idlidosa batter, along with a bunch of other ‘traditional’ food products like Malabar parota, ragi-based batters, paneer and curds . However, 40% of the company’s revenue comes from idli-dosa batter alone. Naturally, the easiest extension was the introduction of vada batter.

It took three years for Musthafa and his cousins, with whom he started iD Fresh in 2005, to solve a very common problem that people face while making this savoury doughnut-esque breakfast item. Shape. Getting the vada with a hole is an eternal struggle for novice and weekend cooks. The team realised they needed to develop a mechanism that would create the perfect shape every time. The answer: squeezewith-ease packaging.


Musthafa’s presentation at Harvard was supposed to be a glimpse of this innovation but the Internet got impatient after seeing the ‘leaked’ video. A few in the industry think Musthafa’s claim is a classic example of marketing gimmick. By design or by error, the video which was later posted on the brand’s official Facebook page, generated over 3.9 million views. Musthafa’s investment in this activity stood at a mere ₹1.4 lakh. That’s about the same price for a brand tweet from a top-line social media influencer.

Better batter, better business
“I strongly believe marketing is not just about advertising. If you have the right product, half of your marketing is done. I started spending money on marketing only three years ago. My product is my hero, and my best marketing tool,” he says. This year he plans to take his marketing spends to around ₹15 crore and believes in the next one year his vada batter will be a ₹100 crore business.

Musthafa spends a generous amount of time talking to young entrepreneurs, students, and various industry bodies. In each of these discussions, he speaks about how convincing consumers that his packaged food items are free of preservatives is the biggest challenge. He tells us that this will be a hurdle for the next 50 years. “It is about a mindset change. Consumers should have a reason to trust you. Our shelf life should have ideally been the biggest convincing point,” says Mustafa. But building trust is no cake walk.

Rajeev Ravindranathan, founder, People, a Bengaluru-based agency that has been working with iD Fresh for the past three years, has similar points of view. “Our biggest challenge is to convince consumers that we prepare food like they do — all natural, no chemical additives, and no preservatives. Unfortunately, all of these have become category claims and don’t cut ice with consumers like they used to.”

To add simplicity in the brand’s marketing strategies, People and iD Fresh have been creating trust-based activities and communications. An unmanned Trust Shop was set up where consumers could buy iD products and pay whenever they wanted. Earlier this month, the brand rolled out a communication piece, Unite India, to encourage people to meet their neighbours over meals, and iD provided free products to those who signed up.

When we asked Mithun Appaiah, the former VP and head of sales, distribution and marketing, at iD Fresh, about his views on the brand’s latest moves, he said that it should continue focusing on its core positioning. “The brand has done well because it has fixed a few basic consumer and its own problems. People are warming up to the category, and there will always be a heavy stress on the distribution side of the business. The challenge will be to scale up in the future by thinking of ways to meet the demand.”

Ashwini Deshpande, founder of Elephant, a Pune-based design fir, who works with iD’s direct competition Fingerlix, believes the brand came in at the right time, from the right place (Bengaluru)with a wellidentified need gap of fresh branded batters. However, she thinks, the biggest challenge for iD going forward will be to transform from being a product-dependent brand to an emotion-led brand, to be more conversational, and more relatable to millennials.

According to a study by Market Research Future (MRFR), the Indian ready-to-cook food market is projected to reach $754.82 million by the end of 2022, registering a substantial compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.5%. As per MRFR’s analysis, the market is segmented on the basis of region, and focus on regional cuisines should be taken into consideration by brands in this space.

iD Fresh is already working on a few regional specific products as part of its growth strategy for next year. Musthafa believes the superfood trend will gain a lot of attention even in his business. The company already has included ragi dosa batter in its portfolio. Up next is wheatoats batter, that’s expected to hit the market next month, and multigrain in 2019. A filter coffee decoction, and the resurrection of a failed chutney range in a new format are also in the pipeline.

“At the end of the day, food sells only if it tastes good. We keep looking at options where we don’t disappoint the consumer,” concludes Musthafa.