Queens of the kitchen

Roping in the homemaker and her unfailing network, Lalitha Rao Sahib has stepped into a market where there’s never enough — instant mixes, finds Bhumika K.

November 15, 2011 04:11 pm | Updated 07:46 pm IST

Sky's the limit Lalitha Rao Sahib, Group Chairman, My Family Biz Photo :  Bhagya Prakash K.

Sky's the limit Lalitha Rao Sahib, Group Chairman, My Family Biz Photo : Bhagya Prakash K.

When something nice smelling wafts out from your friend’s kitchen when you’re visiting, you do follow that smell to discover what’s cooking. It’s this weakness in most of us that Lalitha Rao Sahib turned into a great culinary business opportunity.

It’s now all in the family — of about 15,000 people — called My Family Biz, of which Lalitha is group chairman. Her chain of instant mixes and many other ready food products are available only to people in the loop — it’s a kind of multi-level consumer-to-consumer marketing, but, she assures me, “It’s not one where you end up exploiting relationships (read: you don’t force you friends to buy things they really don’t want)…there are no sales targets.” It sounds, almost… life-transforming?! She tells me the story of a woman in Mumbai who runs a tea-stall — “She uses our rava dosa mix and makes a limited number of dosas each day, making almost Rs. 15 on each dosa!” And then she explains how the intricate system, completely computerised, works, roping in the homemaker and her unfailing network.

But like all big ideas that work, Lalitha and her husband S.R. Rao Sahib started small. And again, like all made-it-big fairy stories, they started out in a single 10-by-10 room at home, 12 years ago, with a 25-kg capacity machine. Today they have five manufacturing units in Peenya. Lalitha’s father, from Udupi, used to manufacture ragi products, and many in the family run hotels. Lalitha and her husband set out to manufacture nutrition supplements because in the early 1990s, the demand was great and it was a fledgling market in India. “We also didn’t have the financial muscle power to go independent,” Lalitha admits. Then they started manufacturing pasta for Sunfeast, Aashirvaad Instant Mixes for ITC Ltd, Great Value brand soup mixes for Bharti-Walmart. They adopted a contract-research-and-marketing model with these companies.

“All our products are made using dry blending technology; it’s not dehydrated. Maintaining the microbiology is the crux,” she says. “All our products are 100 per cent natural; there are no preservatives and chemicals. When you reduce the moisture content, there’s no need for preservatives,” claims Lalitha. The couple make their first batch at home, taste it, pass it on to relatives and friends for feedback.

“When we started at home, we used to get our food products tested outside in labs to meet the statutory requirements. You don’t just need academic qualifications to run a business like this,” insists Lalitha, a mechanical engineer. “You need to have an interest in the subject; know-how is available in the market so easily.”

It wasn’t that simple though, the big picture. When they first set out on their own in 1999, hiring youngsters to market their products, the BPO sector grabbed them with great pay. They burnt their fingers and vowed not to try conventional marketing again; they would go direct to the consumer. More recently, when they were making African seasonings for a Hong Kong-based company, the recession hit and exports blanked out.

Their current product range has hit 59, spread across three brands, to include instant and spice mixes called Udupi Ruchi that span the standard idli-dosa mix to bajji/bonda/vada mixes. Pasta/soup, milkshakes/cornflakes and Indianised vermicelli-noodles mixes has been branded Temptas, and Nutramine is their health product range. Their direct marketing network has already spread across most of south India, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat; Delhi’s next. “Each region has its own taste; we need to figure out a benchmark. We can’t sell the same puliogre mix in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu; we’ve varied the taste.”

They also have bust the myth that readymade mixes are a compulsive buy only for busy urban Indians. “Even in villages and small towns like Tiptur and Mudigere, we have a network because there aren’t good hotels and many people don’t know how to make these dishes.”

Their network does not require any membership fee, says Lalitha. All business is transacted on the web and over cellphones, via SMS and emails; products are picked up at “stock points” — a member’s home where the women in the network in that area can meet up. Once you start buying, there are discounts for the second purchase. “We wanted women to benefit from this marketing model of ours,” says Lalitha. She and her husband walk every year to Tirupathi from Bangalore over seven days, for a cause — they’ve helped build a shelter for rural children with disabilities, and have tried to create awareness on autism.

You can see the details of their working on >www.myfamilybiz.in

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