The outbreak of pandemic has increased the importance of food and nutrition. Lack of food security, hunger, and malnutrition, are some of the problems that we have failed to register. The UN World Food Programme has proven to combat hunger and has recently won the Noble Peace Prize. The agency helps different countries to fight against hunger and malnutrition by providing food assistance to them. It has helped 88 countries including Yemen, Afghanistan, and South Sudan.

To celebrate and embrace the same, ANS Commerce, India’s #1 full-stack e-commerce enabler, shares the conversation with their 4 curated brand partners, that promote healthy living on 16^th October 2020, marking World Food Day, 2020.

“ANS Commerce aims to raise awareness of sustainable food patterns and bring a change in the unhealthy food systems adopted by people all around the nation.”

Theme for #WorldFoodDay2020    

This year, the theme ‘Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together.’ outlines the need to support food heroes- farmers and workers, who make sure that fresh and nutritious food feeds millions of mouths even amidst the global crisis of COVID-19. The theme also reflects the idea of sustainable living, with an agenda of creating awareness of agricultural food that helps people fight back the pandemic. Additionally, it aims to help the entire population, so that their body systems can withstand extreme climate shocks and helps them “build back better”.

4 Curated Brands Which Are Improving Nutrition Patterns

With a thought to reawaken our desires for health and nutritious food, we have talked to our food brand partners who share their path towards success. Let’s delve into their journey.

1. Hea Boosters

Having started off the brand, Hea Booster, in January 2020, Jhoomer Sinha has always believed that nutrition governs health and if it is well taken care of, then so is health. However, she feels that people somehow find nutrition boring and complex and thus ignore it completely. To get the hang of nutrition and how it works, it is essential that you research regularly, understand your body type, and then take an optimum dosage of certain nutrition to check what works and what doesn’t.

“No one likes to do the hard work, which results in common health issues such as obesity, hair fall, skin problems, and lethargy.”
–  Jhoomer Sinha, CEO Hea Boosters

But she was determined to change this. She started to research more in the domain of health & nutrition. With months of toil and continuous dedication, she came up with the idea of Hea Boosters that take care of the necessary nutrition. They further ensure that the daily diet of the people is not compromised and remains optimum.

Launched the brand amid the onset of COVID-19, Hea Boosters has faced innumerable delays in terms of operations and delivery. But Jhoomer’s determination and efforts didn’t break her spirit and she successfully continued with the process and was able to sail through. Jhoomer Sinha adds, “The pandemic has actually worked as an awakening call to the people as they have become more careful and health-conscious.”

“Lesser incidences of poor health aim at reduced medical load – financially on the individual and operationally on the country,” says Jhoomer.

Coming over to Hea Boosters, the products are made with the best of science that takes care of micronutrient deficiencies.

Experience with ANS Commerce: “The experience has been very satisfactory. I love the fact that they are very prompt in problem-solving.”

2. TruMillets

TruMillets began its journey in 2019 with an idea to promote the local food of our nation. “People are aware of millets but they don’t know about how to use it and how to prepare different dishes from it,” says Mamatha N L, Director R&D, Production, TruMillets.

“With the thought to grab this opportunity, we thought of starting TruMillets”, adds Mamatha N L

By observing the trend of ready-made food, they thought to make healthy yet uber tasty TruMillets. It can be cooked just by adding some water. And, the best part about the product is that it is 100% natural, with no added preservatives.

From getting the right equipment to fabricating their own machinery, the brand has faced a major challenge including finding out the right technique for millet processing. Further talking about the post COVID trend, Mamatha believes that people’s inclination towards ready to cook healthy food is increasing.

Experience with ANS Commerce: “Convincing the customer to buy TruMillets was a challenge. ANS Commerce is giving us assistance to market our products online with their optimized services.”

3. Gourmet Garden

Being an avid traveler, a big-time foodie, a passionate sportsman, and a newly minted father to a baby girl, Arjun Balaji has been into management consulting all his life. Feeling bad and annoyed while seeing adulterated and contaminated food, Arjun wanted to feed his family with healthy and sustainable agricultural products.

“While many of us live to eat, very few worry about the source or quality of the veggies and fruits we consume. Farming has for very long focused only on productivity, with little attention to quality, safety, and consistency of veggies offered to consumers. No wonder much of what’s available is quite ordinary: semi-stale, tasteless, and contaminated,” says Arjun Balaji, Founder, Gourmet Garden. Inspired to give people the benefits of Naturoponic farming, Arjun started his journey with Gourmet Garden.

“At Gourmet Garden, our aspiration is to offer the widest range of high quality and safe veggies all year.  We do this by following several world-class naturoponic farming practices that not only yield the best veggies for the consumer but are also the most sustainable for the environment.”
– Arjun Balaji, Founder, Gourmet Garden

Having seen many innovations, Arjun was surprised to observe that very little meaningful effort has gone into solving the complex problems in food quality. After months of efforts and continuous experiments in protected farming, he finally won huge admiration from his early customers. He still had to design a plan to market his production, so he figured out some ways to offer the highest quality products at meaningful price points.

Coming over to the problems and hurdles that the Gourmet Garden has faced, Arjun highlights that sourcing the seeds was the biggest challenge as they had to conduct experiments with over 600 seeds before they could implement their idea.

“We don’t grow our crops using soil as we use bio/organic pesticides. Our nutrients are specially formulated for each crop and fed adequately to the crop so our consumers are eating the most nutritious produce”, says Arjun

Talking about the post COVID trend, Arjun believes that the pandemic has resulted in more people shifting to an online marketplace because they don’t feel safe stepping out of their homes to crowded local markets.  

Currently, they only operate in Bangalore, delivering to over 95 pin codes in the city. But they are planning to expand their production in Mumbai and Delhi within a time span of a year or two.

4. Get-A-Whey

Watching their family and friends noshing on so-called “healthy snacks”, the sibling duo got frustrated and came over with the idea of making protein-based ice-creams.

“We realized there is no option when it comes to eating ice creams guilt-free. Out of this mission, Get-A-Whey was born.”
– Pashmi Shah, Co-founder, Get-A-Whey

Having been instrumental in disrupting consumer behavior, Get-A-Whey has been able to impact the most important thing for a human being which is health without a compromise on taste. “We have extremely high repeat purchase rates and brand loyalists who wait at their doors for our ice cream deliveries. From fulfilling PMS cravings to diabetics who haven’t had desserts for years, we believe our brand has created an influence which cannot be matched by numbers,” says Pashmi Shah, Co-founder, Get-A-Whey.

Made with skimmed milk, whey protein isolate, and premium ingredients, Get-A-Whey ice-creams are naturally low in calories, and high in protein. To all the Keto fans out there, they have also introduced a range which is made with full cream while reducing the carbohydrate content to just under 5.5g per 100g serving.
Coming over to the post COVID trend, they believe that health plays a pivotal role in the current scenario for all food categories. It was always prevalent but now coming to the surface since consumers understand its importance.

Lastly, ANS Commerce would recommend you to swear by our local brands because they give you the essence of your childhood flavors while keeping your lifestyle healthy. With that, we wish you a Happy World Food Day. Stay fit, Stay happy!

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