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“Healthy eating driving revolutionary products in clean label spaces”
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Monday, 15 July, 2024, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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 ProV Foods is an integrated commodities conglomerate – with an aim to become one of the leading dry fruits and staples brand in the country. The brand offers a variety of premium dry fruits, nuts, seeds, berries and more. It aims to inspire healthier choices for nutritious living and sustained wellbeing via nature’s most nutritious snacks.
Shalin Khanna, co-founder and CMO of ProV Foods, shares his views on the F&B industry, convenience food products, challenges in the industry, sustainability, and more, in an email interaction with Kimberley Almeida. Excerpts:
How has the competitive landscape of the food and beverage industry changed?
With disposable incomes increasing and e-commerce along with pan-India logistics efficiency gaining traction, the F&B market in India is seeing many new entrants focusing on certain niches. The pan-India distribution offered by these commerce channels who have now even created specifically “grocery” tabs to focus on F&B – new entrants have found an easier avenue of going to market with a lower amount of sales force overheads. This has allowed brands to focus further on clear niches be it organic, specific diet needs, convenience products, and the like. Furthermore, an underlying theme of healthy eating has driven revolutionary products in the clean label spaces an avenue that was non-existent practically 3 years ago.
What are the different types of products offered?
We present a diverse array of nutritious foods centred around nuts, dried fruits, seeds, berries, and their derivatives. Our product range caters to various preferences through seven distinctive sub-brands. For economical, daily household consumption, our Select series provides natural nuts ideal for pantry stocking. Catering to the snacking aficionados, our mini line offers convenient on-the-go snacks at Rs 30, alongside a selection of carefully crafted trail mixes in our Fusion series. For those seeking flavourful options, our Flavour series presents options such as creamy cheese cashews and plain salted almonds. Introducing innovation, our Lite Activated series offers pre-soaked nuts, a pioneering concept in the market. Furthermore, we address the gifting aspect with our Regal Jumbo Nuts series and Celebration Gift Boxes, providing premium options for special occasions.
Which products are most popular among consumers? Why?
“Convenience” offerings are the ones that are gaining the most traction. In today's fast-paced world of q-commerce and 2-day deliveries, the Indian consumer is spoilt for choice and is constantly looking for products to ease their life – this is the same in the F&B category. They are looking for traditional, daily consumption and/or healthy products without the need for them to cook or a limited amount of involvement – think ready-to-eat packaged food. For instance, we have introduced pre-soaked nuts to replace the consumer's requirement to soak their nuts overnight traditionally – hence easing consumer access to traditional snacks with limited effort.
What are the key driving factors and challenges in the market?
Driving Factors: Increasing disposable income, increasing spending power, pan-India distribution to remotest regions with e-com and q-com, increased consumer understanding of ingredients, the regulatory framework of FSSAI to eliminate spurious brand and products.
Challenges: A large portion of consumers still shop offline – general trade requires heavy investment into a sales force for large-scale growth, school market awareness via television and radio ads has lost its footing, and the new-age digital channels of brand awareness are overly crowded with limited entry barriers and higher chances of fraud advertising.
What type of R&D goes into the products?
We are constantly looking to innovate – our R&D is divided into 3 sections-
• New sub-categories or form factors – such as bars/bites/butter that provide another avenue to bring nutrient-rich snacking to our consumers.
• New flavour augments – to augment new products with traditional and international flavours.
• New convenience-focused products to ease a consumer's life using more ready-to-eat delivery systems such as pre-soaked nuts, salad topping of seeds.
What is the company’s long-term goal for sustainability?
Sustainability in the Indian context can be divided into 2 sections-
• Packaging material – Most packaging today is focused on single-use plastics, with a large amount of government push this would be a primary area of change where one could adopt completely recyclable packaging material in the long run.
• Supply-side: Working with global partners to ensure sustainable farming of raw material that minimises environmental impact, respects local communities, and promotes biodiversity.
Are you planning on launching any new products?
Yes, we have several products in the nuts snacking space that are to hit the shelves soon, we have an entire range of trail mixes to augment our current snacking SKU including but not limited to a tropical mix and sports mix. We are also working on an indulgent series to offer some nutty delights that go into the sweet and gifting category.
Any plans for new collaborations?
We have a long-term collaboration with celebrity chef and entrepreneur Sanjeev Kapoor – and have a lot of interesting collaborative events planned with him over the coming year. Besides this, we are looking to build a community of homemakers and influencers who focus on healthy snacking and in pantry usage of nuts dry fruits seeds, and more. Our intent with collaboration is to drive both awareness of the nutritional benefits as well as end-case uses of the plant-based products we sell.
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