The Indian Dream Creating a Plant Based Meat Business - Abhinav Sinha, GoodDot & GoodDo
Hey everyone - welcome to The Indian Dream podcast. In this episode we dig deeper into the trend of Plant Based Meats with Abhinav Sinha, co-Founder of GoodDot and GoodDo. Good Dot is a food tech start-up and was one of the first companies to bring plant-based proteins to India - Good do is their Quick Service Restaurant arm that's bringing plant based foot to airports & many other locations.
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Before this conversation, I didn't think plant based meats would work in India. A vast number of people are vegetarian and even the non-vegetarians eat meat only occasionally - why would Indians care about meat alternatives? This conversation changed my mind on the industry. We speak to Abhinav about how Indians view plant based meats and the different market segments that are buying this product. We also go into detail on the pillars for any food business that wants to enter the consumer segment. Overall, our belief is that the plant based meat industry is going to grow fast especially amongst younger folks who're getting more environmentally conscious.
We've put a timeline in the show notes so you can skip directly to the questions that interest you.
Timeline
(02:33) - What was the thesis and story behind Good Dot? It is a story of compassion by reducing animal cruelty by providing an alternative to meat.
(7:20) - Did you do the R&D and build the product development yourself? What did it entail? All proteins are based on just 20 Amino Acids and the sequence of these Amino Acids determines how the proteins fold, etc. If you take the same Amino Acids from plant proteins - shouldn't it give you the same bite as animal proteins - you can denature the protein and then align it similar to animal proteins.
(9:56) - What is your target demographic? Conservative vegetarians, moderate vegetarians, adventurous vegetarians (non-veg curious), borderline non-vegetarians (most of India, eat only occasionally), mainstream non-vegetarians (probably once a week because of cost), hardcore non-vegetarians (daily). Leave the two extremes on either side - focus efforts on the middle 4 sections.
(13:54) - How did you figure out which products do go after? Focus their efforts and make their decisions on 5 pillars:
- Taste
- Price - sometimes price is more important in India
- Nutrition
- Quality
- Convenience
(17:25) - What was your Go to Market strategy? and how did you build awareness? RCM - direct selling agents with more than 2 million agents. Cater to the lower middle income market - which is the key market to target.
(20:17) - How are you marketing towards the lower middle income? How do you manage pricing?
(25:31) - How did you build awareness to get people to give it a shot?
(28:23) - Tell us about GoodDo - your Quick Service Restaurant.
(32:22) - What are the opportunities in this space?
(35:11) - What is the entire value chain for Plant Based Meats in India? What are the raw materials and who is manufacturing these in India?
(36:35) - Are you seeing enthusiasm in other kinds of plants based food as you are seeing in plant based meats?
(40:38) - Some large chains like McDonald's and Burger King are adding plant based options to their offerings - what is your experience with it?
(42:01) - Are you still changing the base product?
(43:15) - What are the barriers to entry for a newcomer to get into this field?
(45:27) - What is the implication of the level of processing required for these products?