Raw Pressery to Tap the Healthy Snack Market Next in F&B Sector

RAW Pressery is India’s first and largest clean label company that aims to make being healthy easier. Fresher than any other brand in the packaged beverage category, RAW Pressery’s juice blends are the safest cold-pressed beverages in the market, produced with high pressure processing. Under the guidance of its founder, Anuj Rakyan, the company aims to offer consumers a convenient way of boosting their health on-the- go.

Incorporated as a part of Rakyan Beverages which began its journey in June 2013, in Mumbai, RAW Pressery has been leading the revolution towards a healthy lifestyle by developing, manufacturing, marketing, distributing and selling juices that are free of preservatives, added sugars and chemicals. The juices produced at RAW Pressery are not heated which helps retain their superior nutritional value and sensory profile.

How did you came up with idea? Tell us about the Genesis of the startup.

RAW Pressery was carved out of a personal need to create a beverage that is healthy and tasty. This led to the conceptualization of a company that could plug the gap in India for a juice that balances nutrition and flavor. Anuj wanted to create something that mothers would feel happy giving to their kids. It’s tough to eat all the veggies and fruits every day, so juicing was the best alternative. He realized that good health could begin with a simple bottle of juice. Raw Pressery as an idea addresses three simple questions- Why does being healthy have to be so complicated? Do we believe the health claims marketed by the big food companies? Is there any beverage brand you can really trust to be honest and healthy?

How is your product different from the others in market? Share with us the unique/ key features of your product.

RAW Pressery’s more than 19 variants of tasty and natural juice blends are an amalgamation of freshness, nutrition and taste. They are packed with benefits that alkalize one’s system. The juices are rich in anti-oxidants, are low in fat, boost immunity and help purify the blood. While extracting the goodness of fruits, veggies, nuts, spices, herbs and other superfoods, RAW Pressery uses the cold pressurization process that preserves essential enzymes and nutrients, assuring an “All Good, No Bad” experience to its consumers.

In comparison to other cold pressed juice brands in the market:

• Raw Pressery is the first cold pressed juice brand to be introduced in India.
• Raw Pressery is India’s largest cold pressed juice brand with a production facility panning over 25000 sq feet in space and a production capacity of 1,50,000 liters a month.
• Raw Pressery is the only cold pressed juice available across 8 metros- Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai & Chandigarh.
• Raw Pressery is the only cold pressed juice brand to successfully design, package and deliver detox programs to their dth customer base.
• Only Indian cold pressed juice brand with maximum flavor diversity- 19 unique flavors in its portfolio.
• The first cold pressed juice brand to do direct to home deliveries to 4 metros- Mumbai, Pune, Delhi & Benagluru.
• Raw invests in using cold press juicers versus other brands that are use slow-juicers. The brand employs high-pressure processing to ensure the safest juice with lab test. RAW Pressery is the only cold pressed juice brand in the country with a state-of-the-art cold-pressed juice facility with HACCP certification and FSSAI approval.
• The first Indian brand to introduced packaged/ bottled green juice.

What is the current funding status of your company?

Since 2015, the company has raised nearly $7 million (about Rs 46 crore) in total. The proceeds from the second round of funding (10.5 Crores) are being used towards brand building, adding new products to its portfolio, and towards building out its cold press beverage facility in Panvel, Navi Mumbai. The capacity of the new plant is 1,50,000 liters per month, which is the largest in Asia.

Please discuss you future plans for the business?

Raw Pressery has grown from strength to strength, expanding business to achieve its goal to be India’s largest clean label Food & Beverage Company. We’re currently available in 8 cities, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Chandigarh. We will be soon available in Kolkata and Ahmedabad. We are also receiving a lot of enquiries from the Middle –East. The Indian Food & Beverage market is blossoming with opportunities. We plan to tap into this expansion and invest in healthy snacks and nutrients. We are the only company in Asia employing advanced cold pressurization with High Pressure Processing to maintain shelf life, producing about 8000 units of juice a day. With the coming in of the new state of the art production facility in Panvel, we expect to enhance production capacity by a factor of 2.5. This would enable us to scale up distribution, increasing the foot print to 12 cities, reaching the consumer at 2000 points of sale by the end of FY16, covering modern trade, institutions, HORECA and direct-to-home channels. Making eating healthy easier for the Indian audiences we plan to foray into the fresh food and packaged nutriments. We wish to further establish Micro Cold Presseries across our laid out geographies, each equipped with the best of produce and technology to give the discerning customer a truly physical experience, integrating online and offline. These establishments will allow a consumer to place an order digitally and see their beverage of choice getting made, in real time.

What marketing strategies have you in mind for the brand to get bigger?

Raw Pressery in terms of positioning is placed as a healthy and fresh beverage of choice. In our approach to marketing and advertising, we will be a digital first brand leveraging our social media assets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to create interest and drive trials via our website. Alternatively, our promotional strategies will look at driving trial via extensive sampling and bill boosters at retail.

What kind of challenges did you face while in making and distribution?

It has been quite a journey – we always believed that we had a great product. However, scaling up to new geographies and channels was challenging. Lack of a reliable cold chain, poor infrastructure at retail checked the growth of the brand. We are learning every day and adopting practices which have never been the norm in the industry – air freighting across the country to ensure freshness and customer experience, commitment to replace stocks ahead of the expiry date and delivering direct-to-home orders with the Dabbawala network, to mention a few. We have also realized that in order to grow into a large brand, we need to launch juices that are more familiar to the market. Hence we recently launch the BASIC range – Pineapple, Pomegranate, Mango, Guava & Watermelon. This is the first summer for RAW after we expanded our foot print beyond Mumbai and it will definitely throw up challenges. We are happy to learn and innovate as we grow.

Please elaborate of the market opportunities in this sector?

Unpasteurized, natural, packed with nutrients, enzymes and flavor, the Cold Press Juice segment is seen to grow to a loo crore market in the next 5 years. It’s safe to say that the cold pressed juices will dominate the packaged juice category over in the next 3 to 5 years. Healthy, tasty and fresh, the cold pressed beverage market promises definitive opportunities of growth.