Raghunandan Kamath, the brains behind Naturals Ice Cream, utilised his mother’s techniques and his father’s fruit expertise to create an iconic Indian brand free of artificial colours, flavours, and preservatives.
In 1984, offering Pav Bhaji and fruit-flavoured ice cream to the ever-growing population of Bombay (now Mumbai) was an odd combination, but Raghunandan Srinivas Kamath was well-versed in India’s dessert craze. He’d spent enough time working in his brother’s South Indian restaurant to know how much Indians enjoy ending a meal on a sweet note.
The simple notion of serving something ice after a hot and spicy food succeeded, and he made Rs 5,00,000 in his first year from his modest 200-square-foot shop in Juhu’s Koliwada neighbourhood. A year later, he stopped selling Pav Bhaji to launch his own ice cream company.
The six-table restaurant now served frozen dessert in five flavours: sitaphal (custard apple), kaju-draksh (cashew-raisin), mango, chocolate, and strawberry.
By 2021, the single ice cream parlour has expanded to 135 locations in various cities, with an average of more than 20 varieties available at any given moment. This is the tale of Natural Ice Cream, which in the fiscal year 2020 had a retail turnover of Rs 300 crore and was rated India’s Top 10 brand for customer experience in a KPMG poll.
“You don’t have to wait for the ‘big idea’. It is important to start and build upon the small ideas to create the biggest wins,” Kamath tells The Better India.
Kamath has spent the previous 37 years utilising modest ideas to develop his enterprise.
Kamath offered Pav Bhaji with ice cream at a period when ice cream was an uncommon, but valued item available exclusively to wealthy households. This trailblazing brand likewise avoided the use of artificial colours, flavours, and preservatives that its competitors did.
Kamath paid close attention to his surroundings to create ‘Naturals’ a household name, whether it was learning to choose excellent fruits like his father, employing his mother’s traditional methods, or taking client input carefully.
Kamath was born in the Mangalore taluka of Puttur, Karnataka, and was the youngest of seven siblings. His mother was a stay-at-home mom, while his father worked as a fruit vendor. The family of eight grew fruits on their one-acre plot of land, but their monthly earnings were as low as Rs 100.
The promise of schooling appeared to be insignificant. Students from Classes 1 through 5 were taught together at Kamath’s school, and despite failing his examinations, he was promoted. Kamath, on the other hand, preferred lessons outside of the classroom. He would frequently accompany his father to the field to sell the fruits.
Kamath was born in the Mangalore taluka of Puttur, Karnataka, and was the youngest of seven siblings. His mother was a stay-at-home mom, while his father worked as a fruit vendor. The family of eight grew fruits on their one-acre plot of land, but their monthly earnings were as low as Rs 100.
The promise of schooling appeared to be insignificant. Students from Classes 1 through 5 were taught together at Kamath’s school, and despite failing his examinations, he was promoted. Kamath, on the other hand, preferred lessons outside of the classroom.
Around the same time, the brothers divorced, and Kamath received a part in the restaurant. Kamath founded Naturals with Rs 3,50,000 and six employees. The varieties, hues, and textures of hand-made ice cream varied, but he sold 1,000 cups on the first weekend.
Fruit, sugar, and milk became Kamath’s selling points. He had to not only survive the competition but also make his product stand out. To do this, Kamath departed from traditional tastes and applied his fruit expertise.
“Naturals, an artisanal ice cream brand, has grown significantly as a result of three ingredients: fruit, sugar, and milk.” According to our marketing catchphrase, ‘Taste The Original,’ our brand concentrates on unique tastes such as Sitaphal, and tender coconut.
The company has invented some unconventional flavours like cucumber, prasadam (food consumed by worshippers), gajar halwa (carrot dessert), and tilgul (sesame candy laddus), including a plethora of lip-smacking fruit flavours of chicks, jackfruits, litchis, black grapes, figs and watermelon.
“Not all of these flavours will sell well, but they will increase the value of your brand.” People notice you know more about fruits than anybody else. Many of these tastes are in short supply since they aren’t popular. But it’s like those award-winning art films. “Not every flavour is ‘Dangal,'” he explained to The Economic Times.
Quality is present in all tastes, and Kamath is grateful to his mother for this. He observed her preparing food and devoting time to each dish. There was no space in the Kamath home for ‘fast’ recipes, which is reflected in their brand today.
Kamath also learned how to make a machine to deseed fruits like Cetaphil and jackfruit from his mother. There is a blower on top of the milk boiler to prevent carbonisation, something that was borrowed from his mother’s act of blowing milk as it started to boil.
“As the company expanded, it became more difficult to meet demand.” Because we supplied distinct flavours, our ice cream required specialised equipment and techniques. These machines had to be custom-built, and the majority of them were designed in-house to assure the consistency and flavour that we were providing to our clients when we initially started. Our best-selling flavour, Sitaphal, required a time-consuming manual de-seeding procedure, and as a result, we could only produce 24 kilogrammes [back then]. “We were able to scale our daily output to 1 tonne per day using the machines and our technique,” adds Kamath.
There were no ‘MBA-level’ strategies employed by this daring businessman who simply wanted to sell fruit-flavoured ice cream. By entering a niche segment such as the ice cream market, which was largely dominated by a handful of brands, Kamath took a huge risk but it paid off and how.