Most of our revenues come through organic searches: Ankit Kapoor, Wholsum Foods

Wholsum Foods was founded in 2016, with a mission to provide healthy, nutritious, traditional food made of millets. Its launch flagship product, Slurrp Farm targeted children with healthy food options and in June 2023, Wholsum Foods launched its second brand, Millé, which focuses on millet-based products for adults.

“It’s been a solid year for us,” says Ankit Kapoor, CMO of Wholsum Foods, “We’ve built a strong leadership team, and all the right pieces of the chessboard are in place. We've got a clarity with respect to what is the strategy that will unlock growth for us.”

 Wholsum Foods has grown over 50% year-on-year, with Slurrp Farm’s prioritization focus on three key categories - toddler cereals, snacks, and breakfast foods. Coming to Mille, with the product-market fit identified, the company is now looking to scale up its millet product for adults. “We’ve already begun interventions on millet to strengthen our second brand,” he adds confidently.

‘Real Food. Really Easy.’

In August this year, the campaign “Real Food. Really Easy,” was rolled out for Slurrp Farm, a creative reset that was based on the insight, mealtimes don’t need to be picture-perfect as children are guided by joy, flavour, and the comfort of being cared for and the stress around “perfect plating” often overshadows the joy of eating together.

“Parenting today comes with immense pressure,” says Kapoor. “The media shows perfect meals and perfect kids and that’s just unrealistic. We wanted to change that relationship between food and families and as a brand take this pressure off on food by making food easy and authentic. Healthy food doesn’t have to be bland, complicated or cumbersome to make. It can be fun, tasty, and easy to make.”

How does Slurrp Farm decide if a product deserves a spot in its portfolio? “Simple,” Kapoor smiles. “Every product, we launch has to clear the gate of enough kids returning an empty plate. If they don’t love it, it doesn’t stay.”

It’s this child-first approach that drives the brand’s innovation. The focus remains on food that’s tasty, fun, and healthy, earning kids’ love and parents’ trust. “Our mission is to make healthy food convenient and delicious — reducing mealtime anxiety and bringing families closer,” Kapoor shares. “That’s how we live our purpose: changing the way the world eats.”

 Marketing with Meaning: Authentic, Consistent, Purpose-Driven

When asked about the brand’s marketing philosophy, Kapoor keeps it simple, “No gimmicks.”

“We don’t believe in over-the-top claims. It's got to be purpose driven,” he emphasizes. “Everything we do is rooted in authenticity, trust, and consistency. We will keep building the brand consistently, and carve a very strong niche for ourselves.” This approach has paid off as he notes that Wholsum Foods enjoys high repeat rates across its product portfolio, a testament to both product quality and consumer connection. “If you build with purpose and stay consistent, brand love follows naturally,” Kapoor notes.

Having started as a digital-first D2C brand, Wholsum Foods now plays across multiple touchpoints. “Every brand today is digital-first but being purely D2C isn’t viable anymore,” Kapoor admits. He continues, “You have to adapt your category strategy to the evolving channels. Quick Commerce is now a dominant channel and over 40% of our revenues come from this channel. We are strong on quick commerce and continue to invest and focus on marketplaces, i.e. traditional e-commerce, because it's still a discovery platform for us.”

As a D2C brand, an important strategy is to educate and engage with its community of over 25,000 mothers; as many of the brand’s insights comes from its website/D2C platform. The brand is building up unique experiences on the website so that the community comes on the platform for engagement and offerings other than just buying the product.

While e-commerce contributes 40% of sales, 30% comes from traditional e-commerce and modern trade brings in over 20%, reinforcing brand visibility beyond screens. “Our website contributes less than 10% today, but its real strength lies in education and engagement,” Kapoor adds.

When it comes to spends, the core objective is to keep in large scale trial amongst new brand users and as that pool increases, the absolute money to keep converting to performance marketing will also keep increasing.

 Kapoor says, “We will keep increasing our absolute spend as well as the percentage of spends on brand building to get the new to brand consumers. That will lead to a very efficient conversion of performance marketing spends. We've gone from almost 9:1 on performance and brand building to now 7:15 and we will soon move towards 1:1. That balance allows us to drive brand awareness while ensuring strong performance.”

Even with 100% of its’ spends on digital, Wholsum Foods isn’t rushing to pour money into retail media. “Most of our revenues come through organic searches,” Kapoor reveals. “That’s because people are seeking our brand, not being pushed toward it. We continue to build the brand and invest in top-of-funnel brand building, and that’s how our performance marketing money keeps working harder, becomes more efficient and sustainable.”

Though Wholsum Foods doesn’t use the advertising on the quick commerce platform as the primary form of advertising, it actively looks to collaborate with all the quick commerce platforms, for product launches and exclusive product collaborations.

Beyond Ads: Building Communities through Partnerships

In an effort to help children nurture healthy eating habits, Slurrp Farm recently partnered with KLAY, one of India’s largest preschool and daycare networks, to educate children about food and nutrition. He shares, “Our role is to support KLAY with our expertise as we understand food and kids and improve the relationship that kids have with food. It's a very synergistic partnership with KLAY.”

Wholsum Foods recently held a launch event in Bangalore, engaging with kids and parents, nearly 70% of whom were already Slurrp Farm users. The event featured cooking workshops, storytelling sessions, and reading activities using Slurrp Farm’s book “Kiki,” about a little girl who loves junk food and how fruits, vegetables, grains and milk come together to win her over. “These initiatives don’t just educate kids about food,” Kapoor says. “They build lifelong healthy eating habits and strengthen bonds between parents and children.”

 A Star Ally: Anushka Sharma’s Authentic Influence

 In 2022, Wholsum Foods roped in actor Anushka Sharma as an investor and brand ambassador. “Anushka brought in authenticity and trust as a parent that the brand resonated with,” says Kapoor. Instead of relying on traditional celebrity endorsements, the brand hosts events where Sharma interacts directly with parents and influencers, creating organic, trust-based storytelling.

Despite being positioned in the NCCS-A segment, Kapoor insists the goal isn’t luxury but quality. “We don’t see ourselves as premium for the sake of it,” he says. “As we scale, operating leverage will help us make healthy, high quality food more affordable. We will always be about health, the correct ingredients first so that we don't deviate from our core purpose and make our products at the most accessible price point that's possible,” Kapoor hints.

Looking ahead, Wholsum Foods has got a three-tiered approach to scale up with plans to deepen its presence in India’s top 6–8 cities, expanding to the next 10 within a year, while internationally, the focus will be on strategic markets like Nepal, ensuring depth over diffusion. The focus for Millie will continue to be on quick commerce as there is a need to communicate and explain to the consumer about Millé.

Kapoor notes, “Millé is a very young brand and needs to be nurtured. Slurp Farm, has reached a stage of maturity and needs to be, it is already available in all channels. Now it's about scaling up within every channel possible. From that lens, we're quite focused on Millé versus Slurrp Farm.” Growth will also come through innovation in new categories, turning traditionally unhealthy foods into wholesome, tasty options “plans you’ll hear more about in the next few months. Every category that is serving unhealthy food, we have a right to play in that category, to make it healthy, and tasty,” he notes.