Healthy children’s food in India never really had a chance to be perceived as cool – in part due to packaging that failed to appeal to kids, unlike cheap and unhealthy fast food brands. That perception needed to change, and that’s what two young mothers – one a former public health consultant, the other a former banker – set out to do with their packaged food brand, Slurrp Farm.

“When we became moms, our first big challenge was how can we feed our kids right whilst being working parents, [who are] very short on time,” says Slurrp Farm Co-Founder Shauravi Malik. Malik says the fundamental goal of the brand is to encourage both kids and adults to eat healthier, without compromising on the quality of ingredients.

Although India’s conversation over whether genetically modified seeds are a welcome addition to the food supply remains a political and social debate, the fact remains that ingredient quality in the country is a major issue. Adulterated ingredients frequently plague conventional foods in India, and the Nestle debacle of 2015 only served to prompt a growing movement toward finding better snack options.

Malik, a former investment banker with JP Morgan in London and University of Cambridge graduate, teamed up with her longtime friend, ex-McKinsey consultant Meghana Narayan, to create something they saw a gaping hole in the market for.

“As consumers we are all poor on time,” says Malik. “But that doesn’t mean we should compromise on food ingredient quality.”

Delhi-based Slurrp Farm, named for the evocative sound of someone enjoying their food, developed a range of breakfast and snack options for kids – all made from native organically grown Indian ingredients with a history of nutrition.

“As a company we’re trying not to follow random fads,” says Co-Founder Narayan, a former University of Oxford Rhodes Scholar who also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. She cites the brand’s popular item Wholewheat, Ragi and Chocolate cookies, made with finger millet, a cereal that rural Indians have long fed to their young because of its high calcium absorbency.

While organic and healthy eating has been a topic of conversation in India for a while, it received an added popularity boost when Bollywood actor Aamir Khan hosted an episode of his popular Hindi language social issues television show Satyamev Jayate, discussing India’s need for more organic farming.

This, substantiated by the success of the northeastern Indian state Sikkim as an entirely organic state, has caused people to start paying more attention to the food they consume. There’s growing awareness about the risks involved in unchecked produce, illustrated by the common practice of many Indian farmers to keep a separate organically farmed plot for their family needs rather than the pesticide-laden foods they grow for commercial, urban distribution.

While Slurrp Farm plans to increase their product line to include prenatal, postnatal, and weight-watching products, as well as products designed for the elderly, it remains imperative for its founders that the brand be associative with children.

The brand’s colorful, recycled cardboard packaging is covered in bold, recognizable images of Indian farm animals – a crocodile, a rhinoceros, a monkey, a parrot, a tiger, and a bear – all of which will feature in an upcoming series of stories for children and a recipe book on healthy cooking released by Slurrp Farm.

“We really want to build an association between healthy eating and appealing to children,” says Malik.

Malik is also proud of instilling what she calls a sense of pride in her consumers for purchasing a product “Made in India,” one with a global identity but an Indian price point. A Slurrp Farm box of 18 cookies prices at around $1.50, while a cereal box costs approximately $4.

Since launching the product onto the market in October through Amazon India, e-grocer Big Basket, and through local Delhi NCR grocery stores, Malik and Naryana say they have been thrilled to discover sales have piqued not only in urban hotspots, but also in the rural interior – with many consumers returning for re-orders.

“We want to drive an inflexion, or a real change in the health food market,” says Malik.

“Our intention is to be market makers who create a bottom-up market for this – we fundamentally believe that we need to change how we are eating as a society, not little tweaks which are about replacing ingredient X with ingredient Y.”

The goal of Slurrp Farm, say Malik and Narayan, is to get people eating like our grandparents’ generation did: “The food options that we want to make available on a shelf should be the same as what it would be if we were to make it at home.”

They want Slurrp Farm to appeal to all those with a busy lifestyle, leaving little excuse for poor nutrition.

“At the end of the day I feel strongly that if people care for themselves, they will make these changes,” says Malik.

Source: forbes