BENGALURU: Indian snacks are an integral part of our day-to day meals. For those staying away from home, these serve a reminder of their childhood favourites. During the lockdown, many who couldn’t go back home, also had no access to their favourite snacks.
This craving turned into a ‘eureka moment’ for Muskaan Sancheti and Raghav Jhawar, who started The State Plate, an e-commerce platform to sell authentic dry snacks from states across India.
From Karnataka’s kodbale, to Rajasthan’s Bhujia, and Indore’s Laung Sev, the duo has been making sure that these are home-delivered within three days. The co-founders, whose family roots are in Rajasthan, hit upon the idea sometime in June, realising the market for snacks was unorganised. “Snacks are a staple in our culture, but during the lockdown, our supplier wasn’t operational.
Many vendors who were selling snacks were passing off leftover stocks and had hiked prices drastically,” says Sancheti. When she brought up this issue with Jhawar, who is currently in Kolkata, they realised there was a large scope for organising this business. The 21-year olds, who were classmates at Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi, started this business finding that many were stranded far away from their hometowns during the lockdown.
“People usually stock up on annual stock of snacks, which is usually done in summer. But this year, that was not possible,” says Sancheti, adding that they started their market research in June and were ready to launch in July. The bootstrapped venture was started with initial investment coming from their savings and college internships. They were later funded by their parents.
Like any other venture, they too faced initial hiccups. “We are right now storing around 60 per cent of the snacks that are listed. The rest are procured from the vendor. During the lockdown, we faced logistic and transport issues, and since many factories were closed, they had only leftover stocks. Even getting local snacks from Chickpet was a challenge since it was a contaminated zone,” says Sancheti, adding that currently they functioning on their are own delivery system rather than tying up with any other company. While they are based in Bengaluru, they plan to take their business across India in due time.