Wholsum Foods: Transforming Children’s Diets with Tasty and Nutritious Food
Mumbai: The first WhatsApp Business Summit in India, was held on 12th September 2024 and a slew of features and updates were announced which will help businesses across the country build a presence, create great in-chat experiences for their customers and drive performance ahead of the upcoming festive season.
WhatsApp has also simplified the process and do not want customers to experience a clutter like other platforms causing them to miss important messages from people and businesses they care about. That’s why the focus is on helping businesses create meaningful and valuable connections. Whether designing a custom Flow or running a messaging campaign for a holiday sale. Last but not the least listen to your customers. They will let you know when enough is enough. Even if they opt-in to hear about a sale or promotion, they may not want to receive messages multiple times a day or week.
As India enters the festive season, we believe that these latest updates, along with best practices, will enable businesses to boost their sales and drive growth. By leveraging these innovations, businesses can tap into the festive surge and unlock new opportunities for success.
Millets are small, drought-resistant grains native to South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, cultivated for over 10,000 years. They thrive in arid regions and are a staple for many indigenous communities. The name “millet” comes from the Latin “millium,” meaning flour, due to their texture resembling meal. Botanically, they belong to the Panicum genus in the Poaceae family.
In India, key millet types include: Pearl Millet , Finger Millet, Foxtail Millet, Barnyard Millet, Black Gram and Mustard. Advantages of millets include easy storage, pest resistance, high nutritional value, and minimal environmental impact. They are rich in dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals, making them a nutritious, low-cost food source.
To promote millet production, the Indian government has implemented measures like direct payments to farmers and the launch of the National Programme for Cultivation and Development of Millets (NP-CMDM) and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY).
Millets, once considered inferior to wheat and rice, are now recognized for their health benefits, aiding digestion and supporting weight loss due to their high fibre and nutrient content.
MadeInMedia.in caught up with Shauravi Malik on the sidelines of the WhatsApp Business Summit, as to what made her and her partner to start ‘Slurrp Farms’ 7 years ago. Slurrp Farm aims to empower small farmers and help build a sustainable community by encouraging the use of indigenous crops.
Shauravi Malik and Meghana Narayan, co-founders of Wholsum Foods Pvt Ltd, the makers of millet-based children’s food brands Slurrp Farm and Mille, have always aimed to ensure that all their products are both healthy and delicious for children.
Millets is the new Gold in India now, with the Prime Minister and the Government of India taking the initiative to promote Millets, but you started Slurrp Farms 7 years ago, what made you want to enter a completely unknown market?
When we started, no one really knew much about millets. To educate people, we wrote a White Paper, pulling together all the research to explain what millets are, why they’re better for the world and the environment. But it also made us question the claims—do millets really use less water, are they grown without pesticides, and what’s their true environmental impact?
Initially, we aimed to launch an organic food company, but after a year, I realized there was no real traceability. People were just sampling products. I told Meghana that if we wanted to truly change children’s eating habits, we needed to upscale. While organic works in a smaller universe, real habit change requires reaching a larger audience, and we wouldn’t be able to scale with organic alone.
Both Meghana and I have a personal connection to millets—my mother is a Kannadiga, and Meghana grew up in Bengaluru, where Ragi is a staple. From Ragi Mudde to Ragi Kanji, we grew up eating millets in various forms, even though they weren’t readily available on shelves. This idea stemmed from a mother’s concern about feeding her child healthy food, without needing to label it organic. There’s an inherent understanding among Indians that millets are good for health.
As we experimented with millets, we realized that while wheat isn’t inherently bad, the way it’s grown in India—laden with pesticides and chemicals—makes it something to avoid when possible. At Slurrp Farm, we don’t use wheat, except in our noodles. Over time, we became skilled at making millets both healthy and delicious, bringing traditional recipes from our kitchens back to the shelves. It was a fun and fulfilling journey.
The journey fro offline to being a D2C brand? How do you keep track of your customers as a D2C brand?
We started in 2016, and we were offline and during COVID, D2C was a game changer for Slurrp Farm and Millé, helping them connect closely with moms in India. Their direct interaction with the community led to new product ideas, like their pancake range. Now, both brands are available through their websites and major platforms like Amazon, Big Basket, and Instamart. Slurrp Farm’s presence spans India, the UAE, US, UK, and Singapore. After pausing offline sales during the pandemic, they relaunched in 1,800 stores across 4 major cities. Their latest brand, Millé, caters to health-conscious consumers, offering high-protein, high-fibre options. The brand is preparing to launch a new range of cookies, noodles, and a storybook and guide for parents with creative feeding ideas. Excited to keep growing!
Today D2C is about 10 -15% of our revenue model, for us D2C is a marketing channel, it is a way for our customers to know our story, learn about us, and ideally, I would like them to go and buy our products from the shop, quick commerce or market place.
What is your revenue model?
It is like any other food retail company, we have a gross margin of about 70%, we sell to the retailers at a margin which covers in store advertising etc., then there is a team cost. Today we are at 100 Cr revenue today and we are able to see those investments come through.
Why did you get on to the WhatsApp Business model?
Our angel investor, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, pointed out that as mothers, we were seeing other moms using WhatsApp. So, in 2018, we started putting the WhatsApp logo on all our packaging. We trained our sales and customer service teams to use WhatsApp, and every agency we worked with used it too. WhatsApp became essential for our business because it offers a more direct way to engage with customers. We can nudge them, remind them to restock, or push promotions.
I’d like to highlight two things: first, WhatsApp has replaced SMS and email for us. Second, it has helped us grow significantly—25% of all our website queries come through WhatsApp. It’s also a valuable marketing channel. While I can’t always track where a customer bought our product, I do know that we’re engaging with a large community, and many of our customers have likely come from WhatsApp.
What are your future plans and expansion?
We’ve expanded to countries like Singapore and the UK, where there’s a large diaspora community and English is widely understood, so we don’t need to translate our packaging. We’re also focusing on Scandinavian countries, where whole grains are a staple part of their diet.
At Slurrp Farm, we have several exciting launches coming up. We recently introduced noodles and cookies, and soon we’ll be launching animal-shaped pasta and fruit-based snacks. For Millé, our adult brand, where the mom is the customer not just for her kids but for the whole family, we’re developing more protein and millet combinations.