 Welcome to the key session of the day, this special address by PC Mustafa, CEO and founder IDFreshFood on building a brand using common sense. PC Mustafa led the foundation of IDFreshFood in the year 2005 with the aim of preserving the tradition of Indian cooking. Today, IDFreshFood has become a thousand crore brand employing more than 1500 plus youngsters from rural India and extending its services across the country and the Middle East. Having completed his graduation from NIT Calicut in the Computer Science Department, Mustafa went on to work with companies like Motorola and Citibank. He's also an alumnus of IAM Bangalore. Mr Mustafa has been conferred several awards including India Today, Make in India Award, JCI National Award, Vocational Excellence Award and Entrepreneur India Award among others. He's also a part of the honorable Prime Minister's Champions of Change team with a vision to build New India by 2022 and was recently invited to speak about his inspirational entrepreneurial journey at the UN headquarters. Ladies and gentlemen, you've eaten his idlies, you've eaten his vadas, you've eaten his dosas, now you watch him live on stage. Put your hands together, welcome on stage, PC Mustafa. In the name of God, peace be unto you. Thank you for inviting me here. Such a great honor to be here among all these great leaders. Today, I decided to speak about a very uncommon subject called common sense. Let me introduce you before we start. I am PC Mustafa. I come from a very remote village in a beautiful place called Vainad in Kerala. We had no electricity in my village. We had no roads in my village. My dad was a cooly. As my dad was finding it difficult to meet both ends of the family, I ended up doing a cooly job at the age of 10. I had to walk miles to my school. Government's midday meal scheme was the biggest motivation factor for me to attend the school. Three-time meal was a distant dream during my childhood days. I never had opportunity to breakfast in my life. I was very poor in my studies. I was a school dropout. I later went back to school and turned out to be a school topper next year. I then ended up doing my engineering in computer science from NAT Calicut by chance. I was given a campus offer from a multinational company in Bangalore. After seeing my campus offer, my dad felt it was my annual package, not my Monday offer. It was actually more than his lifetime savings. Seeing my first-man salary, he cried because he had never seen that kind of money in his lifetime. I then worked with a few MNCs in India, Middle East and Europe. I decided to come back to India with an objective of creating employment for smart kids in my village. I then ended up doing my MBA from IAM Bangalore by choice. I then co-founded ID FreshFood along with my cousins. Today, we are a 1000 crore FreshFood brand, serving world's best breakfast, at least to a million Indians every single day. There is no rocket science in this business. There is no entry barrier. Then how did we build a brand without spending money? In the next 25 minutes, I will share a few stories from ID. These are my real-life stories and I hope these stories will help you to become better managers and better human beings. So here goes my stories and the message to you. ID was founded by me and my cousins. Later, new partners and professionals joined us in the journey. We built ID into a 1000 crore FreshFood brand using common sense. Most important aspect of any business is common sense, which is reducing dangerously these days. We are depending on too much on hard tools and spreadsheets, which increases analysis paralysis. When the only thing needed at that time of the point would be common sense. Even when we started ID, our first product, Idli Dosa batter. We used common sense. My co-founders used to run a small-time Kirana store in a place called Tipassandra in Bangalore. Just walkable away from this place. They used to procure Idli Dosa batter from an unbranded supplier, local vendor. It had regular quality issues, service complaints and unwanted cockroaches in the batter. My cousins tried to fix the issue with the vendor multiple times. It didn't work out. That's when we thought we should create our own batter. We consulted roadside vendors and our grandmothers to create the world's best batter. We did not have an R&T team. We did not read market reports. We did not do market research. Easiest route was to add preservatives in the food as done by many others in the market for increased shelf life and better profitability. We decided to keep our products 100% natural. It was actually war against preservatives. Another popular snack that all of us love is the Vada. It's very popular in South India especially. Vada goes best with Idli. Kids love Vada too. But it's one of the most difficult snacks to make at home. Unless you're an expert like your grandmothers. Vada started disappearing from Indian homes, including my home. There are two significant challenges making Vada. The first challenge is to get the Vada batter right. But even if I give Vada batter to homemaker, he or she will not be able to make Vada because it's a cumbersome job. It's a tough task. Vada batter is sticky like your fibby coat. Second challenge is to get the hole for the Vada. You must be an expert to make perfect Vadas. You cannot get the size right. You cannot get the shape right. And we South Indians will not eat a Vada without a hole. When I talk to homemakers in my office, when I talk to homemakers in my office, they were okay to make Vada if I give them Vada batter. But then they had no idea how to get a hole for the Vada. And most importantly, the new generation of homemakers like you will end up frying fingers instead of frying the Vada. We wanted to help all homemakers to make the best Vada at home. This journey started three years ago. If you look back, this is where I'm talking about common sense. This is a century old problem. We identified it. We had the guts to solve it. We talked to industry experts. They were notable helpers. We used common sense to solve it. And our solution is ID's new Vada pack for you. ID's new Vada pack helps you perfect homemade Vadas that are shaped, sized, just like homemade Vadas. Expert made Vadas without you touching the batter. That do with a proper hole in the middle. With 100 percent natural, no chemicals, no preservatives, nothing added in it. Now it takes just one minute for a homemaker to make Vada at home. But then it took us three years to build it. It was not an easy journey. We didn't lose hope. We kept on trying. It was a classical conflict of profitability versus a meaningful solution. I'm sure you're all curious to know about this magical Vada pack. Vada making is a science now. Not an art anymore. Let me show you how it works. May I request you to play the Vada video? It's no ordinary snack. A South Indian specialty. It's a favorite in homes across India. But it's circular cylindrical shape and doughnut like hole make it fairly difficult to prepare at home. It needs the expert hands of grandmas and aunts or even restaurant cooks. Not anymore. ID decided to turn its attention on this age old problem and transform the complex art of Vada making into a science for everyone. And the key ingredient common sense. A path breaking little big invention. The spout that shapes Vada into Vadas with the hole. And that's it. Squeeze, shape, cut, fry. Handmade but with no mask, no stress. Just delicious crispy Vadas. ID maker of India's favorite batters and fresh food presents Vada batter in a pack that shapes Vada into Vadas. Now everybody can Vada. This product and packaging was developed my cousin who didn't have any technical education. Techies like you call it 3D printing of Vada. Experts out there call it innovation. But if you actually look at it, it's common sense. Nothing else. We use common sense to identify a century old problem and use common sense to solve it. That's it. So my first message to you is look around, identify such issues and use common sense to solve it. That's the best way to solve world's problems and build a business out of it. Moving to my second story is about the story of innovation. As I mentioned earlier, there's no rocket sense in making idlidosa batter. Almost zero entry barrier. Anybody can make it. We started with just 50,000 rupees of investment. But then there's something which keep us apart from the local players. That's innovation. So my story is about innovation with an ID. There are five areas that we looked at innovation that we can bring in the business. One is our product innovation. The packaging innovation. The marketing innovation. The backend that we use as innovation that we have done. Technology. We are a group of techies. So technology is something which drives business. And as I mentioned, marketing innovation. So let me just quickly run you through. Few examples were innovated. So when everyone was speaking, we see making the atta at home, the idlidosa batter at home, we thought we can create a product for them. Instead of grinders, we tried to pack the quality of the same home and grind the batter into a pack. When the whole world is busy adding chemicals in the food, we said we'll keep it natural, nothing else. When we entered the crowded paneer market, we differentiated ourselves with the product. Our paneer is made with lime, not with acid. When the whole world is busy extending the product shelf life, doing R&D in extending the product shelf life, we were busy reducing the product shelf life and serving it fresh. We started working with one day shelf life products in the store. Today, we have products ranging from three days to seven days with shelf life. We invented a business model, which can sell fresh products through retail store. This is, I think, probably one of the most important insight of this discussion. How many of you use idlidosa batter? Good. I don't sell idlidosa batter. A homecale ecu picks up a pack of idlidosa batter. It becomes your assistant in the kitchen. You serve, you cook steaming idli and serve it on the dining table to your family. If idli comes out well, you get the credit, not me. And for some reason, if idli is hard, blame goes to me, the brand ID. I think that's a very important insight in terms of innovating the positioning. I'm coming to the packaging innovation. All of you who use idlidosa batter would know that we've created a pack which will transform itself from a pouch to a vessel when you zip lock open it. It's a patented technology from outside. We took almost four years to create it. Today, you don't need a vessel. You can actually make dosa idli directly from a pouch. That's innovation. I just talked about Vada. Became a super-hated cross. We're just launching this new product in the market. We haven't seen that in the market yet. This is the first platform that I'm talking about this. We are launching a filter coffee decoction in the market. And that's a pack. That's a pack. It is pouch. We try to create a 3D printing, 3D view of the product using graphics. And the die-cutting. Let me talk about back-end innovation. To get the best idli batter, you need to soak it, wash it, I mean, clean it, soak it, wash it, grind it, ferment it, pack it. That's all you do. Nothing else. So when you grind it, it has to be ground using the traditional bed grinder, stone grinding, the one that I've shown you in the first foil. Unfortunately, Germans don't eat idli dosa. So there are no large machines available to make idli dosa better. One bed grinder will grind one and a half kg of rice or dal for all. If you use the traditional bed grinder. If I use any non-traditional approach, I will not give the right quality. So we went to US, identified the mustard paste-making machine, got it, customized, and created our own batter-making machine. Today, instead of one and a half kg rice per hour, the same machine, the wet grinding, the traditional wet grinding machine, grinds 1500 kg of rice per hour. That is technology. The technology I'm talking about. ID runs on IT. We are a group of techies. As I mentioned earlier, when the whole world was busy creating a product for long shelf life and following the traditional FMCG distribution model, we were busy creating our own distribution model with shorter shelf life. For that, we used technology. We used technology from day one. Every store is geotagged, geofenced. We have the last seven years data. We used this data for predicting the demand on a particular day in a particular store for a particular product to the accurate level. When we started a new product in a new city, since we deal with highly perishable food, our wastage will be as high as 45% each, which means 100 packets instead of the market, 45 come back unsolved. Today, in a mature city, mature product with this technology, my wastage is less than 1% each. That is technology. I'm coming to the last part of my discussion, which is marketing innovation. I'm going to talk about the press show. How many of you believe something comes in a packed food is healthy? How many of you think you said you use ID better? Do you think ID is healthy? Two numbers, two. Just one person, I think. That's quite natural. That's common. Anything comes in a packed food is considered as unhealthy. I tried different campaigns to mention that even though I come in a packed food, it is healthy, it is natural, nothing else in it. But then people love my story. You were clapping when I told you about my childhood stories. But then people don't believe the story behind the ID. It is natural. My biggest problem was I want my customers to trust me. What is the best way for someone to trust you? What is the best way for someone to trust you? I think almost half of this crowd have experienced ID better. They still don't trust me. Reassurance. Who said that? Trust them so that they will trust you. So we created a campaign called Trust Shop. Three years ago, we set up unmanned shops in apartment complexes and offices. We kept all ID fresh products in a chiller. It was purely based on trust. There were no salesperson, no technology, no cameras, no vending machine, no security. No one was watching except the Almighty God. Customers were expected to pick up a pack of batter, open the chiller, pick up their favorite food, drop the money in the money box next to it. You can see that in the picture. Go home and have a healthy breakfast. Customers were surprised. They couldn't believe it. It got us a great brand mileage. Our campaign video went really viral. Initially when we started, we were receiving monopoly currency instead of the real currency. But we kept on trying. We didn't stop. Later on, the same customers who were cheating us started putting the 500 rupees note and made up for the losses that we made. That made my day. The same customer was feeling guilty. So this is the kind of campaign we run. Now, many of you would think this is a crazy idea. But I can tell you this is a profitable business. We made better money per store than a retail store. Better revenue and better profitability than retail store from these stores. Indians are trustworthy. Don't worry about it. This idea was rated as the best food marketing idea in 2016. We were actually trying to create a brand which just has customers in the heart, not just in the tummy. So my message to you, my third message to you is trust others. So they'll trust you. Be the change you wish to see in this world. Last August, we took an unconventional pack takeover. We introduced a tricolor pack, which was a super hit across. It can tell you stores started stocking our product for decorating their stores. We have created a one minute video, the one that I just saw, by spending 1,40,000 rupees. And I think I'm 8 to see a person who has not seen that video yet. That went so viral. I think that shows about the power of innovation. I'm coming to my last story. We are current time. I'm very passionate about this new idea. We just launched this in market a few weeks ago. In my beautiful village in Kerala, we are a group of hundreds of families living there for generations of different region. We have a church, a temple and a mosque in my village. My dad knows every single member of my village. I know most of them. We share our coffee. We play together. My neighbors visit us for our festivals. We have a very strong bonding. And now live in a beautiful gator community in Whitefield, Bangalore. But I barely know any of my neighbors. I barely know anybody in the community. Though we are an advanced civilization living in metros, we are missing the goodness of community life that is prevalent in villages and smaller towns. This is where we feel strongly that we should do something about it. If we have to make this world a better place, the first step is to know your neighbors better, spend time with them and share the joy. What is the best way to know your neighbor? We thought it is to share a meal. We are now launched this concept in Indian cities. All you need to do is to invite your neighbors for a breakfast. And inform us. My team will deliver ID products free of cost. I mean it is free. You know, you are all thinking right. Some people could misuse it and use it for those personal gains. That's okay. We trust them. I genuinely believe that if we all spend time to know each other, the world will become a better place. People like you and me need to take the first step in for making a peaceful world. This campaign is available for under two weeks. So please don't miss it. Please use. This is free. And who knows? This could be the future. Why not? Can I request you to play the innovation video? Innovation. It's all about simplicity. Understanding people. Solving problems. And of course, common sense. Once upon a time, busy consumers bought their wet batter from small shops. Then along came a group of entrepreneurs who asked the simple question, why should eating your favorite food be a compromise? And so after nine months of painstaking R&D, tons of batter and thousands of trials, I.D. Idli and dosa batter was born with a formula that could be mass produced using no soda, preservatives or chemicals and no compromise to the traditional authenticity of homemade batter. Fast forward a few years, batter soon became a branded commodity sold in plain old pouches. Idli knew its customers loved its batter and idli's and dosa's. But what about the overall usage experience? Not so much. Enter the new Idli batter bank, inspired by a boat with a larger base and adjusted center of gravity. Making it stable, self-standing and therefore versatile and highly functional. Idli even co-designed a wet grinder no bigger than the home version, which turns out 1500 gaes of batter an hour with absolutely no compromise to the only magic of wet batter. Innovation born out of common sense. Let's talk Barotas. Crispy, fluffy layers of yumminess that need handmade skill. So how did Idli's R&D teams meet the challenges of scaling up? A proprietary machine that mimics handmade layered Barotas. Authentic, delicious, just how people love them. Uncommon challenge, common sense. Common sense is how we entered the crowded paneer market. Not with a me too, but with home fresh paneer made using only lemon juice. No chemicals or acids, just natural, fresh. Common sense paneer. A few years ago, Idli wondered if there was a way to reward consumers for trusting it with their family meals. And so was born the Idli Trust Shop. The world's first branded unmanned unsupervised retail outlet. Consumers at apartment complexes and offices could take home Idli food and pay for it later in part or in full. Trust was the currency. Independence Day 2017. Idli decided to pay tribute to our armed forces martyrs with a brave and highly unconventional pack takeover. How better to inspire our consumers than our most visible medium, our packs. South India's favorite snack was also the hardest to make, the vada. So what did Idli do? We invented a pack that shapes batter into vadas. Common sense innovation that identified an age-old problem and solved it. Now everybody can vada. This year, Idli will focus on building communities and camaraderie, as it brings people in residential complexes together to bond over breakfast means of its natural fresh food. Idli is today a hundred million dollar brand innovation drive sense. Common sense drive eviction drive sense to serve our consumers natural traditional food Hope Reservators all can promise. Thank you. It is such a coincidence. Today a young boy who started working as a cooly in a remote village of Vinod in Kerala for whom having breakfast was a luxury runs a company that serves world's best breakfast Idli's two million then Saturday. Let me summarize my messages to you. Use common sense to understand sensory old problems and use common sense to solve it. Do not complicate. Think of simple ways to solve complicated problems. If you want people to trust you, you trust them so that they will trust you back. Be the change you wish to see in this world. Before I end my speech, I would like to leave you with this final message in a beautiful video. It's a tribute to the most important person in our life. Watch on. Thank you and Jai Hind. Anything urgent? Why didn't you pick up? Why you've been sick and you didn't even tell me? I just want to disturb you. Mom very stressed at work. I can't talk right now. Anything urgent? Ladies and gentlemen, can I hear a big round of applause? You know what? I don't know what you're going to do tonight. But I know what I'm going to do tonight. I'm going to go home. I'm going to pick up ID Vada Bhattar before I go home. Vada Bhattar. And I want to tell you this PC. Your Bhattar is not Bhattar. Or Bhattar need Vastegi. The news is lying. Ladies and gentlemen, on that note, that was really inspiring. Thank you Mr. Sopha. And I would request you to stay back on stage because we've got a memo coming up out here. Like to invite on stage Mr. Satya Pratadas, head strategic alliances, lecture media to hand over a token of appreciation to Mr. Mustafa. Can I hear a big round of applause? All right. Ladies and gentlemen, although we're getting terribly late, but there's a clamor for questions. So I'll take a couple of questions, right? Anybody else? I think she had a go at the last speaker. Anybody else who wants to go? You want to go? You can do without a mic. I trust you. Yeah. I just want to start by saying hashtag respect for the humble background she started and how far you took it away. Thank you. So my only question is, how do we delete those without chutney? Good question. But I have a clever answer for it. Keep it off. We had chutney. We had a lot of chutney. Probably worse than chutney. But it didn't do well in the market. Okay. So let me ask you a question in your front bay. Do you eat idli outside? Which place? Plenty of places, nothing interesting. Sagar, any Sagar, right? How much do you pay for a plate of idli? It's constantly inflating like... 30 rupees? Yeah, 30, 35. Plate of three idli? Two. Two idli. 15 rupees per idli? Yeah. Do you buy idli batter? I don't cook at home, so I haven't. So people who buy idli batter pay 70 rupees per kg of idli batter. In that case, around 20 to 23 idli on average. That's around 3 rupees per idli. Good value for money, right? Of course. Instead of 15 rupees, you end up paying 3 rupees. How much do you pay for chutney? Nothing. That's it. That's it. That's the issue. People don't want to pay for it. They want it free. Couldn't wash it. Yeah, yeah. Go on, please. I don't know how has it been received abroad because you've been invited to a lot of foreign lectures and research R&D programs abroad, so how did it happen? So we launched idli in UAE, around three years ago. Today, UAE contributes around 25% revenue and 100% of the profits. Hello. He's soon launching it in other markets. Hello. Hi. So my question is, what's the story behind the name idli? That's it. Largest story behind it. When we were looking for a name, when we were thinking about a name, my cousin coined idli. He actually meant or he was assuming it is idli dosa. But then I was working with Intel at that day. I was on the way back to my home from Intel in that meeting in Tipassandra near the Ganesha Temple. So I had my id card. So I thought it was idli and that's how I interpreted idli. So that's how the name was born, idli. Cute name, right? All right, ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. And I hear a big, big, big round of applause. P.C. Bustapa on stage.