Healthy Food Startups that are Serving the Health Conscious India These four startups are working in the food business and trying to keep their deliverables as healthy as possible
By Madhurima Roy •
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Every time, we talk about food startups in India, few names immediately pop up in our minds. Zomato, Swiggy, Fasoos, Box 8 and Uber Eats are the ones that cross our minds at the very first go. The success of these food startups has inspired other startups to enter the domain with various business models. Some have adopted Order Only model, some have embraced farm to fork model, Order and delivery model, etc. This picture got more colourful as home-grown and foreign investors like SoftBank has started taking interest in the particular space.
A new trend that the food startups sector is witnessing is an inclination towards healthy foods. Starting from home-made food, organic foods to healthy snacking, and the food industry is swelling with the entry of several healthy food companies. Even the existing foremost players like Zomato and Swiggy are ensuring that they are offering 100per cent food safety and hygienic food to their customers. In this health conscious environment, who are the new bees and the existing ones that are operating in the space? Here are a few that have laid their footprints in the Indian healthy food space what are they doing:
Milklane – Milklane, a startup founded in 2015 delivers safe milk to its health-conscious consumers. Desiring to give the best to its consumers and keeping in mind the demand of the market, the company's COO Gaurav Haran says, "We test every batch of our milk for impurities and toxins to ensure delivering 100per cent safe milk every single day."
Apart from the business side, the company has a side, which is socially impactful. Haran explains that MilkLane's key focus is to improve the lives of thousands of small dairy producers and their families by building sustainable relationships with the farmer community. It is associated with more than 8,000 dairy farmers and produces about 1,00,000 litres of milk per day. It allows for systematic creation of social impact through holistic fodder and nutrition management solutions with interventions inbreeding and other services thus improving the lives of farmers. Additionally, the BCO model of MilkLane is driving the entrepreneurship in India."
Doodhwala – Milk industry has a wide market as it is consumed by almost every household. Conceptualized and co-founded by Aakash Agrawal and Ebrahim Akbari Doodhwala in 2015, Doodhwala has emerged as a subscription-based milk and grocery delivery m-platform. The founding duo explains how they operate in the industry, "Doodhwala carves an industry within an industry since we take something that's entirely offline & bringing it online. We are providers of fresh milk on subscription basis. Today there are an estimated 250mn households in India that have an active offline fresh milk subscription."
The company delivers 30,000+ litres of milk every day out of which 60per cent is delivered in Bangalore alone. Currently present in three cities – Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad, Doodhwala stands on the foundation of technology and connected with existing milkmen for sourcing fresh milk.
Phalyum – Even in snacking, people have got conscious and look for healthy alternatives. Catering to the particular demand, Phyalyum, which is synonymous to healthy snacking, was established in September 2018. Since then the startup has been consistently looking for alternatives to healthy snacking and today it is available in more than 200 stores across Bengaluru, Kochi and Chennai. The company is striving to expand to Mumbai and Pune in the next six months. Murari Narayanan, Director, Phalyum shares further insight about the ongoing market and says, "Indians are increasingly moving towards healthy snacking choices and it reflects in their buying decisions. We want to place ourselves as a healthy alternative snacking brand, which not only plays with different flavours but is also consistent in its product offering while retaining the flavor of the fruits and vegetables we use. One of the common problems is that quality is compromised when the product is affordable. Phalyum makes quality products that are within the reach of the public."
- Soulfull – Established in 2011, Soulfull has reinvented the humble grains- millets to create a product which is honest, relevant and convenient for the 21st-century consumers who enjoy healthy breakfast and guilt-free snacking. Being strong believers in sustainability most of their products contain Ragi sourced from local farmers in Karnataka allowing them to create products with less water, support the earth and community.
