CHENNAI: Onions form the base of nearly all recipes, irrespective of the cuisine that you want to indulge in. And only those who cook know the copious amount of tears that are shed to add flavour to the dish. It is these tears that led to the formation of EGK Foods (Everyday Gourmet Kitchen) in December 2014. They offer freshly fried onions to commercial and residential kitchens. Recalling the incident that led to the formation of EGK Foods, Satyajit Roy said, “My mother had made it a ritual to cook a big pot of mutton biryani on all Sundays.” On one such Sunday, he noticed that his mother was in teary eyes because of chopping the onions.
Like every other son, Satyajit didn’t like to see tears in her or any other woman’s eyes. He decided to find a solution to this problem faced in every house-hold. The first exhibition they conducted to showcase the product that they created gave tremendous validation for the product and the mothers from south Mumbai immediately took to the product hailing it as much needed and a tear-free solution to taste. Besides being a saviour to thousands of homemakers and chefs, EGK Foods directly addresses the problem of onion wastage in India.
“India, despite being the second largest producer of onions, has a massive 25 per cent wastage figure annually which amounts to five million metric tonnes. EGK Foods proposes to solve the wastage issue by conducting unique food processing practices and adding value across the supply chain for all the stakeholders involved, ranging from farmers to the consumers for whom we add value at multiple fronts,” said Satyajit. He adds that the company procures onions directly from the farmers in the Nasik area. “When I started, I was the only founding member. Along the way, I had two rounds of investment and two co-founders (Jagdish Gothi and Pradyumna Kokil) have also come on board,” said Satyajit, who was 28-yearsold when he started the company.
EGK Foods set up its first kitchen with an initial investment of `5 lakh. Although EGK Foods set out to sell their product directly to the consumers, they soon realised that consumer education was an expensive affair when done through retail and e-commerce channels. They made a conscious pivot to a B2B model, where the products are sold to restaurants, caterers and hotel chains including flight kitchens and government canteens. The company has around 50 permanent employees and in 2017 EGK Foods processed more than half a million kilograms of onions.
“We hope to be a major FMCG company, whose strength lies in the backward integration which we have set up with farmers, providing them with buyback guarantees and support in technology,” said the CEO. EGK has more than 500 restaurants across Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune. “As per the feedback received from our existing clients, we plan to expand our product line to gravies and pastes. Ginger- garlic paste, garlic paste, ginger paste and onion paste are in the pipeline,” said Satyajit.
In a nutshell
● Everyday Gourmet Kitchen was started up by Satyajit Roy in 2014 with an initial investment of
`5 Lakh
● Over the years they went through two series of funding while two co-founders joined in
● They are a B2B product that sells to restaurants, food chains and even government canteens
● They currently have 500 restaurants on board and are planning on expanding to other food essentials