Crying jags, colic, sleep issues, milestones, breastfeeding…new dad and mom’s face this kind of and greater stress every day. And then the day comes whilst the baby can devour solid foods. New troubles and questions crop up.
“Is the food too granular?”
“Do greens maintain vitamins after boiling?”
“Do I need to cook apples earlier than pureeing?”
Traveling with a toddler provides to the stress – every meal looks like a war for the parents.
This truth hit home whilst Pankaj Prakash, 37, and his spouse became mother and father. But the seeds of the startup were sown in advance.
When Pankaj, who was then heading advertising at Ola and was chargeable for its release in Delhi and Bengaluru, and his wife had a daughter a year later, they went through the same trouble: finding nutritious and smooth meals to feed the baby, particularly even as visiting.
“It brought about the idea that there needed to be a wholesome and trouble-unfastened option for dad and mom to feed their youngsters on the go,” Pankaj says.
After studies that spanned a yr and a half, Pankaj founded Mumbai-based totally Happa Foods in February 2017. The Mumbai-based startup sells organic, wholesome, and tasty toddler meals in tubs and pouches.
“We are on a challenge to inspire an entire life of healthful consuming behavior from the very first bite,” Pankaj says.
An alumnus of MICA, Pankaj has 12 years of revel in across merchandise and categories. Before beginning Happa, he was with Ola and has previously worked with ICICI Prudential and UNIDO. He additionally co-founded inexperienced tea emblem LaPlant.
He used his personal financial savings to make a preliminary investment of Rs 20 lakh. He started running on Happa Foods with a crew of specialists, packaging producers, and a meals scientist. Happy Foods is presently a team of 17 humans. They also have an advisory panel of mother and father on board, who offer remarks on every occasion a new product is launched.
Clean and inexperienced meals for infants
Happy Foods at present offers fruit, vegetable, and grain-based totally blends that come in tubes or pouches.
The purees are divided into three classes – unmarried fruit purees, mixture purees, and a blend of culmination and grains. They cater to specific ranges of a child’s increase.
The shelf life of this merchandise is six to nine months.
“Happa Foods may be saved at room temperature,” Pankaj says.
Priced between Rs 99 and Rs 249, Happa Foods is available on e-commerce platforms like Amazon (Happa become a part of Amazon’s Launchpad Programme), Firstcry, Babychakra, Flipkart, Snapdeal, 1mg, and Bigbasket.
“We have also partnered with the Future Group and at the moment are to be had at Foodhall and Hypercity stores,” Pankaj says.
Happa is likewise working with Reliance Retail.
The challenges they faced
Happy Foods confronted numerous challenges because the crew changed into “wading in uncharted waters,” Pankaj says.
Happy had no floor guidelines to comply with and knowledge to faucet into. Moreover, lab testing and trials have been steeply priced.
“An unmarried gadget run for a small batch of trial products might price over Rs 25,000,” the founder says.
Given the nature of Happa’s target market, the team desired to be doubly sure of the best of the product and started from scratch.
From the farm to the manufacturing facility
Happy assets elements immediately from farms. It resources apples and peaches from Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, while spinach is sourced from a natural farm in Nasik.
“Depending on the perishability, raw materials are sourced in a selected window,” Pankaj says.
Once the materials are sourced, they may be despatched for production to a manufacturing facility that Happa has partnered with. The manufacturing unit is licensed through the US Food and Drug Administration and the British Retail Council.
“We also have Hazard and Critical Control Point (HACCP) certification, which ensures that each crucial point is regularly monitored and controlled,” Pankaj says.
Once processed, each unit is kept in incubation, and first-class exams are carried out. “The processed cloth is shipped out of the agency’s warehouse as soon as we get the cross-beforehand,” Pankaj provides.
As of now, Happa claims to cater to 15,000 youngsters in step with the month and says it has recorded an 11x increase in revenue last yr.
