How Indian foodpreneurs are juicing up the food industry

A new generation of young entrepreneurs is slowly but surely transforming the nature of the food business by moving it away from the beaten track. In the same way as the new generation in the restaurant business is changing the way we eat - and making five-star establishments descend from their high horses - the new foodpreneurs, whom I'll keep introducing in this column from time to time, are injecting a new excitement into a business that no one really cared for after organic products and quinoa became old news.

When Aditya Bagri, fresh out of London School of Economics and Goldman Sachs, entered the muesli business that his father, Shyam Bagri, a prominent wheat miller, had launched 25 years ago, he realised fast that he was sitting on a product that lent itself to more than the breakfast table.

Also read - World needs to go organic now more than ever

The 25-year-old muesli scion, as a result, is now in the thick of rolling out a chain of quick service restaurants (Baggrys on the Go) in malls, corporate offices and airports, selling products such as oats poha and upma, and muesli-spiked desserts, my favourites being the no-maida, no-butter muffins, chocolate-peanut-butter-raisin balls, and a delicious chocolate mousse.

Traditionally horse food in Europe, oats prevent our intestines from absorbing cholesterol.

Add it to bran, a popular cattle feed produced during the milling of wheat, and then sex up the combination with ingredients such as honey, freeze-dried bananas or strawberries, and you get a breakfast supplement that is low on sugar and a cholesterol-buster to boot.

With cornflakes coming under fire because of their high sugar content and for coming loaded with starch, muesli's star is on the rise. And now, Aditya is giving muesli a brand extension that will be interesting to watch.

Also read - Going organic: Field notes from Sikkim

That such young entrepreneurs are making a visible difference is also apparent from the number of cold-pressed juice brands that have proliferated in the market - there were nine of them till Shuddha entered the scene. To understand the business of cold-pressed juices, I caught up with Shuddha's creators, Raghav and Deepika Modi.

Over a sampling of juices, organic almond milk and a cold-brewed latte at the stately Defence Colony home of Deepika's parents, the Modis, who are in their early 30s, explained we don't get to drink cold-pressed juices at home because the production process is hard to replicate in regular juicers and blenders. The recipes for Shuddha's cold-pressed juices have been developed by a raw food consultant in New York City.

These come in a number of combinations, with ingredients ranging from mint, spinach and cape gooseberries (amla) to beetroot, carrots, apples and oranges, and are produced using up to 15 tons of hydraulic pressure. The process allows each element of the fruit and vegetable juices to express itself naturally, without getting manipulated by the heat generated in blenders and juicers.

The preservative-free juices, which have a shelf life of three days, are transferred from the production centre (Greater Noida) to the distribution hub (New Friends Colony) in GPS-tracked cold vans and then transported to the homes of the people who order online on motorcycles loaded with ice boxes, maintaining a temperature of 2-6 degrees Celsius throughout.

The Modis believe India is also an emerging market for almond milk, which not only is lactose free, but also has a quarter of the fat content of regular milk. They highly recommend the turmeric-pepper milk and the cold-brewed coffee with organic palm sugar (which they say is one-fifth as acidic as the regular brew).

Unsurprisingly, they are finding a receptive market.