Introducing, 'The Indianaut Chronicles', a fortnightly interview series where we sit-down with some of the most accomplished entrepreneurs, CXOs, leaders, innovators, and visionaries to figure out what makes them tick and how they're spearheading the next wave of Indian innovation.
‘Start small – Break even early - Replicate Success’, these words by Arushi Sachdeva hold utmost importance in the F&B Business. She has brought waves of change for Bakers in India by co-founding Dohful, a digitally-native, CPG company introducing India to craft cookies. Delivering happiness all over India, Dohful, also shares a dose of taste through their weekly newsletters.
A strong believer in the power of teams, she has experienced different nuances of entrepreneurship with multiple ventures like Grubcha and Sandwedges, each of which is unique and pre-eminent.
Gautam: What is Dohful's ‘Indianaut’ origin story?
Arushi: Dohful was started purely because of our love for cookies.
I was first introduced to soft-baked cookies when I was on my honeymoon to Europe. And my first thought was ‘I have not had anything like this in India’. I don't think I knew what cookies were till I tried a real genuine cookie. They were so much more gooey and flavourful and soft than anything I had had before.
And both Chaman (my husband) & I, we just fell in love with them. We used to search for coffee shops famous for their cookies and go to try them out. And our 10 days were spent in cookie bliss.
And as we came back, we realized we actually missed that taste. In fact even here in India, wherever we used to go, we used to try the cookie, but we couldn’t find anything remotely resembling the experience we had there.
So we decided to experiment in our own home kitchen to see if we could replicate the taste ourselves. And we were already food entrepreneurs at the time, so it was not too outrageous for us to think maybe if we’re able to make something really good, we can try introducing India to soft-baked cookies.
We started experimenting with our recipes back in mid-2018 and I remember we used to bake day-in and day-out, three batches a day. It took us 70+ days to crack our first recipe - the Choco Chunk Cookie. In late Nov 2018, we finally launched our website - dohful.com
Dohful cookies are all baked from scratch using the finest ingredients and traditional methods. Our cookies are 100% eggless and made without any preservatives or additives. We only bake on order. There is no inventory.
Gautam: Your product can be considered a 'category of one' in a unique fashion. Why don't you elaborate on this?
Arushi: Dohful is a soft-baked cookie company. These are a special kind of cookies that are really gooey and soft to bite into while having a slight crunch at the edges.
These kinds of cookies were non-existent in the Indian sweet-tooth ecosystem, if I may. And that’s what initially baffled me. Because cookies as such are known to people. But soft-baked cookies are not.
So, honestly, when we started we didn’t know if there would be as many takers of these specific kinds of cookies. But we were very pleasantly surprised by the support we got from our patrons.
Apart from this, we are not strictly a packaged-food company. We are a cross-over between a restaurant & a packaged-food company whereby we make freshly-baked cookies, then package them beautifully so that they can reach any doorstep safely anywhere in India.
And that is again something which has not been seen in India before. Everything we eat primarily comes in two forms - fresh-cooked or packaged. And these two are distinct categories, right?
You wouldn’t expect freshly-cooked food to come to you after traveling hundreds of kilometers, while you wouldn’t even bat an eyelid if the packet of namkeen you’re having right now was made in the opposite corner of the country. Dohful sits very comfortably at the center-point of both of these categories.
Gautam: At the heart of your business, you're an e-commerce company. Considering how you're dealing with a perishable good, what additional challenges does someone operating in your category face and how do you overcome them?
Arushi: Logistics is the number one challenge because there is hardly anyone else shipping freshly-cooked food products across the country. In fact, I remember in the beginning, when we went to tie-up with a courier partner for our shipping purposes, they were very apprehensive of shipping such products.
We had to assure them that packaging everything robustly was our responsibility and that the cookies had a natural shelf life of 30+ days before they took us on-board!
To make sure that the cookies don’t break in transit and reach their destination in a mint condition., the packaging is done in such a way that we give a good amount of cushioning between each of the cookies. The airtight wrapping which we do to pack each cookie individually keeps the cookies fresh for 30 days without any preservatives or additives.
Gautam: What has been the impact of COVID-19 on your existing business model and how was Dohful adapted to these chaotic times?
Arushi: Business model wise not much has changed actually. Because we were an online company from day 1, we were able to spring back to life as soon as the lockdown got over.
And as these were handcrafted cookies, we had always been very particular about our hygiene practices. So we were doing many things like washing our hands multiple times a day and wearing protective gear, etc. even before the pandemic.
But as everyone is working-from-home these days, we are getting requests from many small and big companies to send gifts to their team members. This is part of the new normal for us because before the pandemic, companies did not need to send multi-city gifts but now this is almost a necessity.
It all began with a Korean company that contacted us because they wanted to send some goodies to all of their Indian team. We made special cookie packs for them and shipped them all across India. Their entire team appreciated it a lot and we received many kudos from them.
An HR from another company (We had sent cookies to their entire team of 250+ people) told us ‘my inbox is flooding with appreciation emails from the employees. I particularly loved the packaging and the care that was taken to keep them fresh.’
Gautam: People are becoming more conscious in terms of what their bodies, be it veganism or gluten-free treats, how do you innovate your menu to target this new market segment?
Arushi: As Julie Child said, it's about ‘Everything in Moderation, Even Moderation!’
We’re always experimenting with new flavors and products and will definitely come up with something when we feel we have the right product which does justice to the cause. Right now, it's all about real, genuine, handcrafted cookies!
Gautam: What are your future plans?
Arushi: In the near-term, there are so many new cookie flavors in the pipeline. I’m so excited, as the winter comes, we have new flavors waiting to be launched pretty soon!
In the long run, we always want to be a cookie company. We feel our cookie journey is just getting started and we hope to delight everyone with our cookies for a long time to come!
Gautam: What one piece of advice would you like to give to the aspiring 'Indianauts'?
Arushi: I think one should be able to get their own hands dirty if they want to achieve something. I was only able to start Dohful because I decided to try and replicate the cookie recipes on my own. Had I been dependent on anyone else for a task as important as this, Dohful might have never been launched.
So this is one of the most important things while starting an entrepreneurial journey - get your own hands dirty.
Gautam Marwah is the founder of Indianaut, a platform showcasing and strengthening India's next best analytical and creative minds.