iD Fresh Food founder wants to help people fulfil basic food needs

My cousins and I were the owners of Choice store, a local grocery store back in 2008 in Bengaluru. We always kept our ears to the ground. Our sales of the idli batter from a local vendor were growing, but so were the number of complaints.

This gave birth to the idea of creating our own idli batter for sale," recalls PC Musthafa, co-founder of iD Fresh Food. That's when Musthafa and brothers decided to take matters into their own hands. They started off their venture with an initial investment of '50,000 to supply batter to 20 stores and sell 100 packets a day. From then to now, iD Fresh Food has expanded its capacity to selling idli batter for a million idlis a day, with a plan to increase it to 10 million idlis per day.

The team at iD Fresh Food took 10 months to get things rolling as they combated preconceived notions about packed food items. At the same time, they kept building on their distribution network to reach more buyers.

"When the whole world was trying to increase shelf-life, we created a zero-inventory business model. Throughout the supply chain, we don't keep stock. We believe it's better to under-stock than overstock, and better for customers to return empty-handed than buy a substandard product," says Musthafa. With iD, Mustafa wanted to venture into the ready-to-cook category to give back to society and touch the lives of millions of people to fulfil their basic food needs.

PC Musthafa

The brand's aim was to go back to its roots and strengthen community ties. Along with that Musthafa also wanted to become an entrepreneur. With the support of his cousins (the co-founders), he thus took a step towards rural employment opportunities.

"We saw a lot of talented and smart youngsters in my village who were unemployed and never got a break in life because of the requirement of formal education. We knew by choosing the entrepreneurial route, we could provide employment opportunities to thousands of rural youths either directly or indirectly," says Musthafa, the son of a daily wager who grew up in Chennalode, a remote village in Wayanad district in Kerala.

Since 2012, iD Fresh Food products have reached all parts of Mumbai and in the coming year, they plan to cover twice the number of outlets. They provide the perfect solution for office goers with healthy and preservative-free breakfast options. And the only thing that completes an idli breakfast is a piping cup of filter coffee, iD has covered that, too. Musthafa thought that making an authentic, aromatic cup of South Indian filter coffee can be a time-consuming and painstaking process, which is why a lot of homes shy away from it.

Thus came the idea of a decoction made from the finest coffee beans. With the filter coffee decoction, they have cut down the task to just adding hot milk and sugar. "Home-made filter coffee decoction has a shelf life of one or two days. We wanted to create a preservative-free and healthy duplicate of filter coffee, which had the shelf life of three months."

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