South Indian breakfasts are not easy to make. Today, in most homes the day is hectic and the working class has to leave early, sometimes without having enough time to cook breakfast. It is for those busy bees that Soul Food Factory has come out with fresh, ready to cook batter for Idli, Dosa, Uttapam and Appe. The Soul Food Factory was co-founded by two foodies, Laxmi Saraf and Dr Nikhil Bhoomkar in 2018, as the duo wanted to offer some change in eating habits and at the same time, give a choice of a wholesome, nutritious convenience product.
“We strive to solve many household problems like not having to skip meals or breakfasts. Saving cooking time and having something hot and fresh on the platter within minutes, lures anyone to sit and have the breakfast in that morning rush hour or a snack in the evening. It also reduces the intake of maida based products, and reduces the health risks like diabetes, PCOD, IB etc. This may make a small difference, but in the long run, it does count,” explains Laxmi Saraf, co-founder of Soul Food Factory.
This product, ready-to-cook batter, is not targeted only towards households, but Soul Food Factory has hotels and restaurants too, as their regular clients, it reduces the labour cost, and saves the expense of on-boarding South Indian chefs. They have repeat customers, who are health conscious, and who trust in the quality of the product. “Our products are a perfect balance between quality and affordability. You see, breakfast food varies widely from place-to-place, and home-to-home. It often includes cereal, pulses, or legumes in most of the preparations. The most popular South Indian breakfast foods include idli, dosa and various other preparations,” points out Laxmi.
She briefs, “We, at ‘L N Ventures’, are manufacturers of fresh idli, dosa and medu vada batter under the brand 'Soul Food Factory' at our unit at Corlim near Old Goa. We aim at providing fresh quality batter at affordable prices. The batter is prepared by applying hygienic methods, high quality raw material and RO water and is packed in high quality food-grade packing material. We do not make use of preservatives or soda in the batter.”
Dr Nikhil Bhoomkar adds, “We aim at making the product available to all types of consumers. The opportunity for such products in the market is immense as the daily life of the working populations is getting hectic where people tend to skip meals, which can be made up with a ready to cook idli, dosa, and medu vada batter wherein the drudgery of pre-preparation time for cooking a nutritious rich and wholesome meal is reduced and a meals are not skipped.”
Speaking on the concept, Laxmi says, “Since both of us were foodies and were looking to get into the food business, we saw the space of fresh, natural, traditional and clean products as a segment with a high potential for acceptance and sitting with our ethics of health and taste. We saw products in this line which were offering much below par quality and consumers had no choice available. Hence we thought of getting into this segment.”
While Dr Bhoomkar looks into strategy, finance and new market opportunities, Laxmi looks into operations, product development, marketing and sales. “The product is available in major supermarkets across Goa. It’s also available on Indian online grocery delivery company Blinkit and soon should be available on Instamart too. We have lots of orders flowing in online through these portals,” says Laxmi.
Starting with batches of 35 kg per day, the Soul Food Factory team now produces a tonne per day on a good day. “We don't look at it strictly in numbers, but we prefer to look at our growth as a brand which once was not known to anyone and today consumers ask for our products. Its more so the trust we have earned which is dear to us. We produce around 5-6 tonnes per week of fresh batter. There is no specific peak season as such for this product. Since it is a daily breakfast essential demand for it is all throughout the year and is only increasing with more and more people opting for a fresh guilt-free tasty home-made option,” claims Laxmi.
The product is available in one kg packet which is easily sufficient for a family of four for over two breakfast sessions. Each kilo can make around 16-18 crisp brown dosas and 25 big size soft fluffy idlis. The ingredients are rice, urad dal, methi and ro water. As of now for retail they have dosa batter and for B2B they provide dosa batter, medu vada batter, and podi chutney.
“I should admit that our dosa batter falls in the most demanded item category. We sell across Goa to a lot of retail outlets as well as a lot of B2B vendors. It's tailor made for each channel every day. We don't export as of now, although there have been enquiries for the same. We need to work on channels of support for this. We do have stories of consumers carrying packets with them to neighbouring States in cold boxes when they were here on a holiday and picked out products when they stayed in the local Air BNBs,” points out Laxmi.
Like any other business Soul Food Factory also plans to have their products reach new geographical areas and attain newer markets. The founders are looking into these options actively. “We are more comfortable with product development and manufacturing of such products and thus we are looking out for strategic channel partners who can help us take these products outside Goa,” shares Dr Bhoomkar.
