Value addition has been the buzzword in agriculture and food industry for quite sometime now, but not many have taken it seriously in Kerala.
Manas Madhu, an engineer-turned-entrepreneur hailing from Alappuzha, is an exception. When he chose to step into the already-crowded snacks industry, he knew his products should be different. Beyond Snack, the brand he founded serves you your humble banana chips with a twist. These come in different flavours.
Co-founded by Jyoti Rajguru and Gautam Raghuraman from Maharashtra, Beyond Snack, with its spirit of innovation and a promising wide market, has been attracting investors; the latest being NABVENTURES that has committed $3.5 million - nearly Rs 30 crore. The investment, coming from one of the best performing funds in agri and food tech will be instrumental in expanding the company's distribution network, supply chain capabilities and research and development.
Manas started out as a typical techie-turned-startup founder in Kerala. Born and brought up at Chennithala in Alappuzha district, he did his BTech in Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering from Kerala University. He went on to do MBA from Symbiosis Institute of Management, Pune.
He dreamt of being an entrepreneur while pursuing business administration. However, like most of the middle class ambitious business aspirants, he chose to work and earn for sometime before starting his own venture. Manas worked as a business consultant in Capgemini in Mumbai and Bengaluru, and later moved to IBS, Thiruvananthapuram.
“I started reading about the scope of value addition in food industry while working as a business consultant. The more I learned about the topic, the more I became interested in it. At IBS, I was free on weekends. Hence I travelled to different places and met people involved in such businesses. In 2018, I decided to start my own venture,” Manas told Onmanorama.
Manas did not start with bananas. Instead, he launched mock meat made from jackfruit. The company which produces Beyond Snack chips is still known as Dr Jackfruit India Pvt Ltd. However, the jackfruit experiment was not a big success. Taste was a problem, Manas said. So was the inconsistency in supply of the raw material – the jackfruit.
In banana, he did not have to deal with these two issues. Banana chips is an all-time favourite in Kerala market and there’s a unbroken supply chain. However, he paid attention to standardise the quality of his product and diversify the tastes. In addition to the classic salted flavour, Beyond Snack offers peri peri, salt and black pepper, alongside sour cream onion and parsley flavours. Recently, the brand introduced two new flavours to the market: Desi Masala and Hot & Sweet Chilli. The company claims that the chips do not contain any artificial colours or flavours.
Manas and his team realised the potential of his product while participating at VAIGA (Value Addition for Income Generation in Agriculture), an exhibition organised by the Kerala government’s department of agriculture in Thrissur.
“We had set up a stall there and offered our free samples to the visitors. Many of them wanted to know if the products were available for sale. That night itself we shifted the stock we had at Alappuzha to Thrissur. In those five days, we sold product worth for Rs 1.2 lakh.
Manas started his company in 2020 January when the Covid lockdown was just two months away. Though the pandemic uncertainty gripped the nascent venture, the company overcame it sooner by finding its space in the e-market.
It has established online footprint across significant marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart, Big Basket, Blinkit, Swiggy and Zepto, enabling nationwide accessibility. Beyond Snack rapidly expanded its retail presence in Maharashtra. The company has also launched its products in Bengaluru and Hyderabad while it has ambitious plans to expand across 10 states and 25 cities in the coming year.
“Our vision is to place a pack of banana chips next to a pack of potato chips on all the retail shelf of this world. Our mission is to rewrite the narrative about banana chips, offering consumers an authentic, high-quality, and reliable snacking option,” Manas said.
Beyond Snack has achieved notable progress in global markets, establishing its presence in countries such as the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Sweden, Qatar, Nepal, Singapore and Mauritius.
Beyond Snack got initial investment from 100X VC and other notable angel investors and angel networks like Faad Network. The company gained widespread attention when it was featured on the highly acclaimed Sony television programme Shark Tank India Season 1. During the show, Ashneer Grover, co-founder of Bharat Pe and Aman Gupta, co-founder and chief marketing officer of boAT, recognised the potential of the brand and made an investment in it. Since then, Beyond Snack has experienced exceptional growth, expanding its reach threefold within six months of receiving the investment. The company is also registered with the Kerala Startup Mission.
(Startup Saturday is Onmanorama’s weekend series featuring promising startups from Kerala. Find the previous stories here.)
