Bengaluru Women Trio Launches instant healthy foods brand amidst COVID-19

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Bangalore-based Roopa Adiga, a-42-year-old, Geetha Nagesharao Kupparavalli, 48-year-old, Rajeswari Ramnath, a-54-year-old. The three women, who call themselves natural product lovers, got together in February 2020 to start a small FMCG company. 

 

Breakfast mixes, dinners and curries, spices, hair care items, oils, and more are all available at GRUhasutram. 

 

GRUhasutram gets its name from the initials of its three co-founders. The three pals were always together for get-togethers and other celebrations regularly. Roopa was a stay-at-home mom, while Usha and Geetha had worked in corporate and entrepreneurial environments. 

 

The trio shared a passion for food and discovered during one meeting that their college-aged children living outside of Bengaluru were yearning for home-cooked meals and were unhappy with the market's offerings. 

 

"The real flavour was absent when we served our children prepared meals." Usha recalls, "This spurred us to rush into action." 

 

According to their study, this was an issue in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, where a large number of young people travel from all over the country to find their way into the tech industry. 

 

Usha, who left her job in 2019, recruited Geetha and Roopa, who each put in Rs 3 lakh to start the FMCG company.

 

And during the COVID-19 pandemic, the desire for FMCG products, particularly ready-to-eat foods, increased dramatically. As per ResearchAndMarkets, the Indian ready-to-eat food market is expected to develop at a CAGR of much more than 16% from 2018 to 2023, reaching $647 million. 

 

In the beginning, GRUhasutram released a variety of spices and breakfast mixtures including rava dosa and rava idli. 

 

Although selling its products was not difficult, functioning amid a global epidemic with severe restrictions and lockdowns was difficult. 

 

In an attempt to acquire headway, the co-founders began providing free samples to customers. 

 

To guarantee their safety, the three women completed all of the labour themselves and did not recruit any help in the first few months. 

 

Word of mouth and the distribution of free samples helped this modest business grow over time.

 

GRUhasutram began by taking orders from a single neighbourhood in Bangalore's Sarjapur Road, then expanded to certain other areas of the city and afterwards the country. The company currently receives orders from a variety of locations, notably Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and others. 

 

According to Usha, they hired a few men who had lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic to assist with local deliveries. For pan-India deliveries, the brand has partnered with Shiprocket. 

 

On Sarjapur Road, the GRUhasutram production unit is housed in a small basement. Raw materials are sourced from a variety of locations, including Kurk, Neyveli, and others.

 

GRUhasutram's mission, according to Roopa, is to deliver authentic and nutritious food products. 

 

The founders chose to obtain raw materials from local farms or from stores where they knew the quality would be good. 

 

In total revenues, GRUhasutram has yet to make headway. The ladies, on the other hand, indicate that it serves around 1,500 people per month, with 60-70 per cent of them being repeat customers, and that it sells over 350 pieces per month. 

 

GRUhasutram intends to list on marketplaces such BigBasket, Amazon, and others in the future, and talks are underway.

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