iD Fresh Food to Transition all Products to Organic
Company targets revenue of Rs 350 crore in FY 2019
iD Fresh Food India Pvt. Ltd, the maker of packaged idli-dosa batter, has announced that is will transition all its products to certified organic and pesticide-free. The company calls this transition iD 2.0.
“The second version of our enterprise carries forward the company mission of bringing together the best of tradition and innovation. Most of us have forgotten that India was traditionally organic in its farming. The fertilisers and pesticides came in later, courtesy global influences. At iD Fresh, we are making earnest efforts to go back to our organic roots and embrace the goodness of nutritious food, while cutting down on our carbon footprint. We are constantly in the process of bettering ourselves. A dedicated team has been working on the organic product category since the last two years and we are excited to see how our customers respond to iD 2.0,” said Musthafa PC, CEO and co-founder, iD Fresh Food. “Currently all organic products come at a 90–100% premium. We are launching our products in a similar price band as our existing products.”
The new products will be marginally more expensive : around Rs 10 more than its current Maximum Retail Price (MRP).
The phase-wise transition of iD Fresh products into iD Organic kick-started this month, with their flagship offerings — Idly and Dosa batter, Wheat and Oats Dosa batter, Rice Rava Idly batter, Ragi Idly & Dosa batter, Malabar Parota and Wheat Parota — in the Bangalore market. Over the course of the year, other iD Fresh products, such as Natural Paneer, Filter Coffee Decoction, Wheat Chapati and the Vada batter, will join the organic group. Over the next six months older products will completely phased out.
The company is targeting a revenue of Rs 350 crore in FY 2019 from a revenue of Rs 210 crore in FY 2018. It had a revenue of Rs. 170 crore in FY 2017. The company has raised two rounds of funds from Helion Ventures and Premji Invest. iD Foods currently has a market cap of Rs 1000 crore.
There are several challenges involved in making organic food truly accessible and affordable : empowering farmers and developing stronger supply chains to adopting the best environmental practices and safeguarding natural resources. “We are going back to the wisdom of the past, armed with value engineering in procurement and manufacturing as well as use of technology. The plan is to work towards higher output with no quantum jump in the cost. We want to pass on the cost benefits to our customers,” added Musthafa.
“According to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), when we say that a product is organic, it essentially implies two things. One, it is free from toxic persistent pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, growth hormones and antibiotics or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Second, stringent organic cultivation standards are followed, with respect to impact on soil, water and air,” read a statement by the company.
“All our ingredients and processes are compliant to organic certification norms — from reputed suppliers to storage facilities and manufacturing units. We plan to take a systematic approach in transitioning over from conventional to organic,” stated Musthafa PC.
The Bangalore-based company has been awarded certifications from the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Jaivik Bharat, under the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).
“We work with vendor partners who in-turn work with farmers. For a business like ours this is a better strategy. This transition would mean a 20–25% premium to the farmer. There are three vendors we work with now who engage with around 1000 farmers,” he said. “Next week our coffee will be available in the US in Indian stores. We strongly believe that supply creates demand. We will be adding 50% new stores this year. We already launched in Delhi and Ahmedabad and will launch soon in Kolkata. We will be the number one player in organic in the fresh food market in India and probably in the world in one year.”
Over the last 14 years, iD Fresh has evolved from making batter in a 50-sq.ft. kitchen in Bangalore to modernising food packaging and establishing its presence in 28 cities across India and the UAE. The company currently has five factories : Bangalore (in Mahadevapura and Hoskote), Hyderabad, Mumbai and Dubai.
“We have been profitable from day one. We made a profit of Rs 430 in the first month,” says Musthafa PC.
The company provides 55,000 kgs of Idli/Dosa batter per day, with other products like Parotas, Vada batter, Chapati and paneer among others to more than 21,000 retail outlets.
In India, the organic products market is expected to touch ₹10,000-₹12,000 crore by 2020, according to a report by The Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry (ASSOCHAM) and Ernst & Young, released last year. The market size for Indian organic packaged food, the report estimates, will cross ₹ 87.1 crore by 2021 from ₹ 53.3 crore in 2016, growing at a rate of 17 per cent.
