How Myints is Preparing to Foray into D2C Category

The frozen food market is flooded with starch and deep-fried potato and maida-based convenient snacks in the veg category. To bring a change in the segment, Myints 3-minutes was launched a few months ago. 

We want every Indian vegetarian family to eat better. From the idea of replacing the available frozen food of french fries, tikkis, etc – which are nothing but fried potatoes and fried maida - Myints brings in healthy and high-quality snacks,” states Ashok Bansal, Co-founder, and CEO, Myints.

“The recipes have been curated by an ex-restaurateur, an ex-Taj professional, and a renowned professor of F&B who specializes in Pan Asian Cuisines. And the same is evident in the fusion taste of Myints products. There is another smaller differentiator - all 3-Minutes products come with their chef-curated, exclusive dip. We did not want our customers to dip everything into the tomato ketchup at home and kill the basic taste of the recipe. Each of our dips has been uniquely paired for that recipe only,” he further adds.

Retail Strategy

The brand follows an omnichannel go-to-market strategy with a presence on e-commerce and in offline supermarket stores. The brand is available on BigBasket for at-home deliveries, apart from several other online platforms of Modern Bazaar, Optima Mart, Needs, Safe-O-kart, etc. 

“For offline supermarket stores, we are available on leading modern trade chains of NCR – Foodhall, Modern Bazaar, 37 Krishna Marche, Needs, Sodhis, etc. Overall, we are present in 80+ physical outlets within one month of our launch in Apr 2021, and we are expanding rapidly,” he says.

“In fact, requests are coming on our website from reputed SAMT retail chains of satellite cities of Bareilly, Jalandhar, Moradabad, etc. to supply our products to them,” he adds.

The brand is working towards the D2C model. By the second year of its operations, it aims to be available across all channels - D2C, e-commerce, and offline channels, in 15 cities of the country, in retail as well as HORECA segments.

Talking about the product range, he states, “Our range of products in Phase-1 includes Herbed Baby Potatoes with Tomato Sesame Seeds Dip, Grilled Veggies with Special Thai Dip, Paneer Mix Cigars with Honey Mustard Dip, Stuffed Mushrooms with Sunset Red Dip, and Paneer Pesto Fingers with Chef's Special Sauce.”

“Our range starts from approx. Rs 165 per packet for a 400+ gms to Rs 325 per packet,” he adds.

In addition, there are about nine products at the R&D stage. Within the next 9-15 months, the brand plans to launch a range of organic and vegan products as well.

Impact of Pandemic

The brand faced many challenges like disruption in production, disruption in the supply chain, and disruption at the end of customers.

“Disruption in production was due to high-end production factories being shut down due to safety concerns or were working at 20-30 percent of their capacities. Second, the supply chain was disrupted since the movement of delivery vehicles was severely reduced and a large number of the field manpower itself got affected by Covid or went to their villages/ hometowns. Forget the smaller setups, even large e-commerce players had no risk mitigation or contingency plans to deal with it,” he asserts.

“The customers also were a harried lot – especially in the 2nd wave of Covid. They avoided going out even to the grocery stores, except for the bare essential needs,” he adds.

The period was difficult for the brand as it could not do the brand promotions or samplings. However, despite all hurdles, the brand clocked sales amounting to Rs 10 lakh in the first 6 weeks of its operations.

How Bright is the Future?

In conjunction with its exclusive associate partners, the brand has ISO-22000 certified production facilities in Greater Noida, Kashipur, Nashik, and Bengaluru – thus covering the length and breadth of the country, from North India to South India. 

“We are just 2 months old and already present in 80+ outlets in NCR. We are expanding rapidly. In the 1st year, we shall be present in more than nine cities and over 300 retail outlets. By 3rd year, we aim to be present in more than 1,050 outlets across 20+ cities pan India,” he asserts. 

The brand also has plans to enter the export market by the second year of operations – for which it already has all licenses, including full export compliance of the production facilities in terms of ISO-22000 and BRC (British) code certifications.

The future plans of the brand w.r.t. the products include introducing more SKUs. It plans to take the SKU count from 5 to 8 in the first year of its operations.

“Fully Organic and Vegan range is also something we plan to launch next year onwards. We will offer all our products in the HORECA segment - with customization if required,” he concludes.