Three meals per day and an additional session for snacks are mandatory in almost everyone’s life. Most of the snacks that we prefer contain a lot of preservatives and reused oil. In the fast-moving world, inappropriate eating habits can cause health issues, especially if you lack regular exercise. 

Snack Me develops ready to cook snacks from homegrown recipes. These are easy to cook, store and also affordable to the masses. The highlight dish of the menu includes 15 varieties of Samosa. A well-organised customer advisory committee is functional to discuss and develop new recipes and analyse nutritional values. The start-up utilises women channel partners who improve marketing through WhatsApp groups and also specialise in Corporate Catering. The excerpts from our brief discussion with Anushka Jaisinghani, Co-founder, Snack Me, is given below. 

Anushka Jaisinghani, Snack Me

India’s snacks market is huge, with every state, every community having its own set of favourites. Some snacks like Samosas are national in scope. What’re the other types of insights we can tell readers with regards to snacks? From the perspective of Snack Me’s offerings. 

“SNACKING” is something that we have observed that all age groups indulge in some twice a week and some over weekends. We have also analyzed that today’s millennium customer is looking for “Convenience Food” at the same time they are conscious about freshness, no preservatives etc.
Hence SNACK ME looked at developing a whole range of “Ready to Cook” Snacks –
* From home grown recipe
* Easy to store
* Easy to cook and also affordable to the masses!
* Snacks that can be cooked using Airfryer/ Baked in OTG or simple kadai fry method.
We developed entire range of “Samosa” in Veg , Non Veg and Jain & Dessert Samosa as well! (We have 15 variety of Samosa on our Menu)

One will wonder why “SAMOSA” …. Personally feel that Samosa as a snack is something that all age groups and all religions relate to – for me Samosa personally is like “KING of Indian Snacks” something that even a common man or a labour class can buy at just 10/- a pc.
Hence thought of getting innovative with this product line and develop more flavours and variety! Giving the customer a different experience and value addition to the product!
Seeing the tremendous potential we expanded our Frozen manufacturing line and added variety of Rolls & Momos also ! (menu attached)
This helped us meet every palate! Healthy & Tasty Bites!

Food, being such a large business category is ripe with competition. What’re some of the trends you’re looking out for to keep the Snack Me ship steady? For example: the proliferation of cloud kitchens which’re delivery only.

Snacks segment is truly filled with competitors, and hence very critical to be aware of competition. It has been observed that while a few players with the focus on bottom line , tend to dilute on quality. Eg. When we say it’s a Paneer Samosa – its very important for the customer to Relish Chunky Bites of paneer with the right flavoring…. And that’s what makes SNACK ME stand out – we are known and appreciated for our quality standards. 

In addition to help maintain a regular funnel of sales we cater to the following segments
* D2C – We have looked at covering geographies across Bangalore by appointing smart enterprising women across – who help us market our products in their Apartment whatsapp groups and get us orders – “these Women – are more like our channel partners” This model helps them earn by just networking and refering to friends n connects – an ideal home maker at home! We have women who easily earn as high as 15k a month just by helping us with “WhatsApp” marketing within 5km radius of their house”
* HORECA Institutional packs – Cloud Kitchens/ Café/ HORECA etc. We have a few Cloud Kitchens contracts and our sales team constantly works on adding more and more to the list!
* Contract Manufacturing (frozen snacks) – we are currently contract manufacturing
   for 3-4 brands.
* We also have Super-stockiest and distributers appointed in Bangalore / Tamil Nadu / Hyderabad & Amandaman & Nicobar Islands

So we are constantly working on partnering with Brands to help them enhance their revenue by adding new innovative finger snacks. We want to focus on the Manufacturing part and hence we partner with touchpoints which can add our snacks to their menu and further process the snacks and sell it “Ready to Eat” 

What is the scope of effort that goes into churning out your snack recipes at scale? For instance, how much time does it take to perfect a recipe into a scalable, finished snack product?

In Food Industry its important to keep innovating and getting creative with our culinary skills constantly to help retain customers month on month – especially in D2C segment.
* STEP 1 : We have a “CUSTOMER ADVISORY COMMITTEE” a 10 member team – comprising of a 3 of our Regular Clients, CHEFS from our Cloud Kitchens whom we cater to and also 1 Food blogger along with our Production Head and myself.
As a team we meet once in 60 days to collect feedback / inputs and also present to the Advisory Committee 2-3 new snack recipes to get their feedback / inputs.
STEP 2 – Sampling
Once the advisory committee together approves a Recipe, we make 100 mini sample kits and send it to 100 of our regular customers and channel partners with an evaluation sheet. Based on inputs gathered from both teams – 

STEP 3 -LAB test Nutritional value evaluation & quality check – samples sent to our Food Technologist and post which the “NEW product is launched”
The shelf life of the product on menu – could be seasonal (festive seasonal) or based on movement of the product city wise. Our team is constantly working on enhancing quality & variety!

Do you rely on the modern retail network or online delivery channels or any other sales partnerships? How important are they to your business?

Retail Networking model needs deep pockets & a different strategy and has its own challenges. Being a startup in Frozen Snack – we have looked at embracing technology and looked at partnering with various ecommerce shopping apps/ sites and uploaded our menu on their plateforms.
WhatsApp marketing & Social Media is also seen to be a new emerging marketing segment which we are using – which helps us get closer to customer directly. 

Today we are lucky to have many delivery partners who are willing to partner with you to help grow Pan Bangalore & Pan India.
Eg. Dukan , PING, Helo, Indiamart, MYGATE and many more.

How does an average day for you look like, personally and professionally? How do you make sure your energies are aligned to productivity?

For a Women Entrepreneur – who has to balance between multiple rolls she needs to play – its very vital for her to get Support & Encouragement from Family members – as that will surely help make her life less stressful. I have been lucky enough to be blessed with a very supportive husband & kids.
An Ideal Day journey starts at 6:30am with skating boards on ☺
6:30-9:30am – Goes in getting the home errands done n met
10:00-4pm – Im at work – at my manufacturing unit/ client visit / calls etc
4-6pm : I work from home ( to ensure im available for kids as I have 2 small angels aged 5 and 10yrs)
6:30-7:30pm – my workout time
7:30-9:30pm – Family time
9:30- 10:30pm – this is ME time where I sit to review my days work and ensure most of the tasks planned are completed and plan my next day.
SUNDAY : I take a day off from work (except season time )

Who do you look up to in life, say as a mentor? Or someone who inspires you.

For me the most inspiring Women is Ms. Jaaswantiben – Founder of Lijjat Papad. Truly inspiring how she has built a team of 46k women across to grow this home grown business worldwide manufacturing 4 billion papads. Truly a legend and roll model for Women entrepreneurs like us in Food Manufacturing Business….
Hope to build our Frozen Snack Manufacturing Unit to 100+ women by 2025 – manufacturing snacks for PAN INDIA with automation !

I do have my financial advisor & mentor Mr. Vijay Ladha & also a very supporting pillar assisting us on branding is Ms. Preeti Sawhney! In addition I’m part of this very interesting COHERT of women who are part of GAME “Global Alliance for mass entrepreneurship” where is there are pool of experts who are always ready to help & connect you to the industry experts to help you grow & learn!

Author