Pawan Kumar, Co-Founder, Hoi Pure: Frozen food has been a part of lifestyle of most of the world. India is just about waking up to it.

Launched in June 2020, Hoi Pure is a lifestyle and gourmet food delivery platform that delivers within 3 hours of placing the order in Delhi/NCR, Chandigarh and Bengaluru. A subsidiary of Hoi Foods, one of India’s largest growing cloud kitchen networks, the inception of Hoi Pure is truly linked to the global worldwide pandemic – Covid-19 and the need to cook at home. Hoi Pure focuses on providing customers with a wide range of food choices completed with some delectable tasting experiences – all in the comfort of their homes.

In an exclusive interview with Steena Joy for WOH News, Pawan Raj Kumar, Co-Founder, Hoi Pure elucidates on the concept and the future roadmap for Hoi Pure.

What was the inspiration behind this venture? What were the initial challenges?

Indrajeet Roy, the founder of the business, used to travel a lot to remote areas for his projects with various industries while consulting them for bringing efficiencies in their operations. During this time he used to stay in various budget hotels where he regularly encountered problems in quality of food. This experience literally left a bad taste in his mouth. He wanted to rectify this and while discussing this problem with me, he found the solution and that was the inception of Hoi Foods. Using my knowledge of setting up supply chain and kitchens for various QSRs, we started on the journey of building a highly scalable network of food outlets using the existing hotel kitchens.

Initial challenges were around getting the product and processes right. We didn’t have any benchmarks to fall back on and the hotel owners were difficult to convince. However, within months of inception, we built a network of almost 100 kitchens in NCR including OYO where the guest experience ratings improved due to better food.

We didn’t stop there as our aim always was to build a consumer brand. We set up cloud kitchens in more than 60 locations in NCR, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. We built the same model and strengthened the network to bring standardised meal experience for our consumers in hotels, homes and offices. The same supply chain and network has now given us strength to set up a D2C website Hoipure.com that delivers exclusive curated food in RTE/RTC formats. Through this website we sell Hoi Pure branded frozen snacks and also those of other partner brands.

D2C the new buzzword, what is its relevance in the food business?

D2C or Direct to Consumer is not just a buzzword, it is going to be the way for brands to sell their products in this decade. India is on the cusp of consumption growth and the internet has just made it possible for companies to sell directly to consumers.

While there are already some cosmetic and gadgets companies doing a great job of D2C and giving giant incumbent brands a run for their money, food needs a special solution. At Hoi Pure we have been able to find it by building our own network of outlets. This is the power of our existing network that will scale very fast in the coming months.

Fresh vs Frozen. Will Covid’s aftermath impact the frozen food segment adversely?

On the contrary. Covid has made people realise the benefits of frozen food. We call it TLC – Taste. Low Cost. Convenience. This category will actually now grow rapidly, and rightly so. Fresh and frozen both will grow side by side. Processed food with preservatives, colours, additives that are largely junk might go down.

The frozen food market in India? How do we compare to international markets?

Freezing food to preserve is part of many old civilisations so as such, frozen food has been a part of lifestyle of most of the world. India is just about waking up to it. This is the reason that many brands are seeing a huge skew in the demand and are not able to keep up the supply. So while right now the market size for consumer frozen food might be tiny in comparison, the potential is huge.

The frozen food supply chain and infra in the country? Again, how do we compare internationally?

We are getting there. Thanks to the effort of many of us, this infra started to build in the 1990s and has been getting better.

Future roadmap?

We are very strong in food development. We can curate and create recipes very quickly and launch them much faster than anyone else. We will continue on this journey and build Hoipure as a curate food store selling iconic products from pan Indian cuisine. In the coming months we plan to launch close to 100 such products.

Apart from that we will be growing our network rapidly to many more cities. We plan to have 300 outlets of Hoi Pure in the next 5-7 years.