It’s a hot summer day. The water in your bottle is almost lukewarm. You wish you could lug around a mini fridge to keep it cool. But here’s a simpler solution — terracotta bottles. While the market has a few options, the latest entrant is Kandy, a Chennai-based brand that launched in October last year. It has been started by 23-year-old Sandeep Kumar Gangaram, a student of Engineering Design in IIT Madras. Fondly known as Sandy by his friends, Gangaram named his brand Kandy as it rhymes with his nickname. “Since I always caught a cold when I had anything chilled, I was scared to drink water from the refrigerator,” says Gangaram. After years of grudgingly making do without cold water, he came across terracotta bottles. But he wasn’t satisfied until he started designing his own bottles. “These maintain the water temperature at 24 to 27 degrees. So the water is cool, quenches your thirst, and it’s not artificially cooled,” he adds.
Gangaram’s is a single-occupancy hostel room but he shares it with stacks of bottles — four large boxes packed with 40 units and carefully sealed. These brownish-red one-litre bottles are priced at ₹499. People have been asking for 750 ml versions and that will be available shortly, says the young entrepreneur. “Last year I received a grant for two lakhs under Innovative Projects to develop the product further. We are working on methods to make it a more durable product — a terracotta bottle that does not break easily, and improves the quality of water. Also, we will be starting online sales through our website kandybottle.com. As of now, we are actively participating in pop up events, selling through Facebook and word of mouth,” he says. Since the company is still in its initial stage, there isn’t a fixed number of bottles they make every month. But they can produce up to 300 pieces per month, says Gangaram, adding, “I have sold 500 plus bottles so far. Most of the orders are from Chennai, Coimbatore and Bengaluru. There has been an interest from retailers in Sri Lanka as well, but for now the focus is on Chennai. Recently, I sent 20 bottles to Dubai. But those ordering have to manage shipping on their own.”
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While Gangaram comes up with the design of the product, he’s identified potters in Villupuram who create the bottles. “A few local potters referred them to me, as they said a design like this could be done by more experienced craftsmen,” he says. Initially they were heavy but after moving from the potter’s wheel to slip-casting, the weight has gone down by half. “A bottle weighs 400 gms when its empty and its 1.4 kilograms when its full. It is a little heavy,” he admits. The bottles are sealed with a cork and come in a jute bag with padding at the base. “It’s all natural as the raw materials include clay, sand and water. The corks are from a firm in Delhi. The jute bag is made by Jooholic, a small business started by a few girls who graduated from Ethiraj College.”
The wonderful thing about these bottles is that every time you fill water it smells like the earth after a spell of rain. “There is something beautiful about that scent and I want more and more people to experience it,” he says.
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