KOCHI: Oats, the healthiest gluten-free whole grain mixed with antioxidants, minerals, fibre, and other important vitamins is considered one of the healthiest food options for people of any age. But despite its goodness, a lot of us don’t prefer eating it often because of its bland nature.
To make it ‘edible’, oats are often dressed with sweeteners, fruits, and nut butter. But Kollam-based entrepreneur Rejimon Thankachan has found a way around this, a natural way to make oats taste better.
Under the brand name ‘Glorys Foods,’ the 44-year-old has curated exclusive multigrain sugar-free oats for diabetics and tasty sweet variants that can be consumed by anyone irrespective of age.
Rejimon came up with the idea of oat variants two years ago. He was a construction worker in the Gulf for almost a decade. In 2010, he returned home and decided to start a food business in his hometown, close to his family. Rejimon made use of his experience in the Middle East to introduce Arabic food like Kuboos initially.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take off as well as he expected. Not willing to quit, Rejimon decided to sell bakery goods till 2018, but even that didn’t earn him profits. “Honestly I didn’t have enough information to run a food business. But I didn’t want to stop. I released a line of healthy food products next,” says Rejimon.
He then attended several classes at the Food Agro institute in Bengaluru and learned a formula for a product meant exclusively for diabetic patients, which again didn’t have many takers. “It was in the powder form and was to be consumed like a drink mixed with milk. It had contents like karuka and karinjeerakam to make it tastier,” says Rejimon.
But he knew that using the same formula to make products wouldn’t do well for his brand. So he decided to enrich it with the multigrains. Both the oats variants are packed with 22 varieties of grains, including green gram, lentils, urad dal, chickpeas, Bengal gram, and others.
“The oat brands available in the Indian market are loaded with fiber. But not many have added nutrients, vitamins, minerals and protein to oats or made them naturally healthy. Though several brands have introduced multigrain oats, only a bit of cashew or dried fruits can be found in some,” says Rejimon, adding that his oats variant will be loved by kids too, which generally isn’t the case.
The oats by Rejimon are meant for diabetic patients and can keep their sugar level in check. “Diabetic patients are hungry often. Since the oats variant has 22 varieties of grains, it will keep them full longer, while also supplying them with essential nutrients,” explains Rejimon.
Since Malayalis are always on the lookout for something new, Rejimon believes his organic oats will be of great use to them. The upgraded oats can also be used to make delicious puttu, upma, idli, dosa and other Kerala breakfast varieties. Glorys Food sources grains from local markets and farmers.
He has 16 employees preparing the food items in-house. Rejimon claims that the brand sells around 2,000 packets daily and most customers come through word-of-mouth publicity. “We have distributors in all the 14 districts in Kerala. We also export to Gujrat, Pune, and Bangalore. We have buyers in Muscat as well,”
says Rejimon.