HYDERABAD: From ‘one-and-half stores’ back in 2013 to nine full-fledged outlets across the city and four at the Hyderabad International Airport, Almond House is no more just another brick-and-mortar sweet mart. Meet the man who has changed the brand’s image — Chaitanya Muppala. Ask him to define Almond House, he says: “It’s a 30-year-old start-up.” In a heart-to-heart chat with Express, he speaks about how he transformed a legacy business, his love for brand and product creation and life in general
When did you know that business was the thing for you?
I didn’t know I had to do what I had to do till I was doing it. I actually didn’t want to do this. The business was started by my father (in 1989 at Himayatnagar), who is a chemical engineer from BITS-Pilani. He started it out of serendipity. He wanted to do something small and conducted a market-gap analysis. I fell into it because I was visiting quite often while I was studying in Canada. This was during my last semester in college. After college, I just could not detach myself from it. Once you get sucked into something, it gets difficult to crawl back out of it. Once you taste the adrenalin rush from the hustle, it’s difficult to get out of it.
Did your family expect you to join the business?
There never was any such expectation. It was never something I had in mind either. When I took over (in 2013), it was a very small business — we had just one-and-half stores (laughs). It was a 24 or 25-year-old small, local brand.
You call Almond House a 30-year-old start-up. Why?
There was one old man doing accounts on one computer that ran Tally. We had no systems or processes in place. We only had the brand, which was also very local. In many ways, it’s a start-up. It does not have any of the advantages of one though — agility, excitement, young workforce, etc. But it has all the disadvantages of a legacy business — no systems or processes. We had all the baggage of an old business without any of the advantages of a start-up. We built everything from ground up. Now, we have a team and we are really lucky to have good people. We are a value-driven business, so our goal is that as we scale, we don’t dilute those values. That makes growth slow, because you just can’t hire anybody — you need to let them understand the culture and make sure your culture is not diluting. This is our primary focus.
When you say it’s a values-driven business, where do these values stem from?
These are what we inherited. These values are from our customers. As a business, you are a member of the community. You are not an entity. So, how can you contribute to the community apart from making your money and putting up good products? As a business too, we are a community. Our attrition rate is very low; some of our employees are with us from day one and we want to retain that. My father, too, ran this business in a similar fashion. He ran it at a relationship level, he used to sit at the store, people saw him and knew him personally. We don’t have the luxury of doing that anymore because we can’t be at 10 places at one time. So, how do you inculcate that into everybody in the organisation? That’s what we are addressing. That goodwill is something that we inherited. Now, how do we ensure that we keep it going? The hardwork was done by somebody else, it takes long to develop those relationships and create a space for your brand in the consumers’ minds. We are only trying to cash in on that without killing that golden goose.
Tell me about the Standford Seed programme that you were part of.
Standford Graduate School of Business, which is the top B-school in the world, was running this programme called Standford Seed. They were looking for small and medium enterprises in Africa and Asia, which have a potential to scale globally. We got identified. The idea was to find out what is preventing us from scaling and how we can work together. The faculty, the Standford Seed team and our team, worked together for over a year to develop a strategy which can see us through over the next five-six years. This was pre-pandemic, but it armed us with the skills that we needed to scale up and emboldened our vision for how far we want to reach. It was a year-long immersive programme for the business and me as the business’ leader.
How did this help you with your business?
Back then, it was me pulling all the weight, which was not sustainable. How do we build teams, get them to work effectively, build a culture to support those teams — we weren’t even asking these questions. The programme made us think, ask these questions and now we are slowly building on that.
Indulge and Gappe Vappe, the brands that you launched, are a big hit. What’s next?
We just didn’t want to make a business. Our goals are not financial, but impact-driven or soft goals which are larger than number goals. We have an objective that every year or two we need to launch a new brand. We are now working on creating an arsenal of brands that we can scale up individually. Each one has an individual team, head and strategy. They all work together wherever they can, wherever the synergy is. I’ve built this business around what I like to do, my interests and what keeps me going. Creating brands, creating products — these are things that I am interested in.
Do you have a mentor; someone who has guided you, held your hand through the ups and downs of business?
I don’t think I had one mentor, there were several. You ask people and they will guide you. I don’t think it’s possible to have a single mentor. If anybody proclaims that they know everything, then you obviously know that’s not the right person.
Whom do you confide in while making important business decisions?
They say it’s very lonely at the top. At the end of the day, the buck stops here, right? That’s true for any business; however big or small it is, you have to take responsibility for it. You rely on your team to make judgements. In our system, I am accountable to my team and not the other way round. I bounce my ideas off anybody I can find, be it a consumer, an expert, a specialist, etc.
It was after you stepped in that Almond House’s image changed drastically. Was that the plan?
We wanted to step away from the image of a halwai. As a brand, it had a lot more scope. In 2013-14, the median customer age was tipping over 40 and we wanted younger people to walk into our stores, which is where Indulge and Gappe Vappe came in. Our communication style changed, but at the end of the day, product is king. All of this is just dressing for a good product. It was a conscious decision to change the image. We wanted to reposition to a premium to super-premium category.
Ever since the pandemic broke out, people have become health conscious. Do you think this will affect the demand for sweets and snacks?
I think it’s going to become a niche. I have a trademark that I own, called ‘Responsible Indulgence’, which goes on all the packaging. It says: ‘We advocate responsible indulgence. Please enjoy our product as part of a balanced diet and in moderation’. This resonates with a lot of customers. For example, Almond House does not make sugar-free sweets. There’s nothing called sugar-free. You are going to add some artificial sweetener or stevia. But there are so many other ingredients, which are calorie-rich and have a glycemic index, that go in. If I label something sugar-free and someone buys a kilo of sweets for her diabetic grandfather, saying it’s sugar-free, and the man pops, it’s on my conscience. The idea is that, you can indulge, but in moderation. In fact, our customers come to us for that as we are almost 30% lower on sweetness as compared to our competitors. Also, post-pandemic, people want a safe place that they can trust. I am the only ISO and HACCP-certified manufacturer in my category in AP and TS.
How do you strike a work-life balance?
I’m very bad at it. But speaking of hobbies and passions, we tend to integrate it into our business. For example, for the last three years, I’ve been working with farmers in West Godavari to find and create high-quality cocoa so that we can launch our own chocolate brand. What started as an adventure (to launch a chocolate brand) became an agri business. The point I’m making here is, you find an itch and to scratch that you build a business around it so that you can make something meaningful out of it. That’s how I balance things. But I’ve been unsuccessful when it comes to balancing work and life.
Do you ever take a break?
Before the pandemic, we (Chaitanya and his family) used to take at least a month off. We had done a Hyderabad-Bangkok drive. We want to do more of that. I try and integrate my breaks also in my work. I’ve been spending almost every weekend at the cocoa farms. This is as good as a break for me because I am not looking at Excel sheets and all (laughs).
Lastly, how’s fatherhood treating you?
Very good. It changes you as an individual and business leader. People tell me I make more rational decisions now. It changes your mindset, you become less ad hoc and more calculated. It teaches you to think about others.
Chaitanya wanted to step away from the image of a halwai. As a brand, it had a lot more scope, he says
— Himabindu Reddy himabindugopinath@newindianexpress.com @himureddy