{Foodtech watch: Mighty Foods} Ready to cook plant based food for a health conscious India

This plant-based protein, Ready To Cook (RTC) and Ready To Eat (RTE) food company is heralding innovation in foodtech, addressing India’s shift to healthy eating.

As life becomes faster and time becomes elusive, Ready To Cook (RTC) and Ready To Eat (RTE) food is becoming a part of everyone’s lives. Moreover, among the many lifestyle concepts that COVID-19 changed for us, one is food habits. While some people looked into their diets and found it deficient in ways, others explored different ways of consumption.

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According to FnBnews, the Indian market for RTE and RTC food have steadily grown, reaching US$261 million in 2017. It’s expected to grow at a CAGR of nearly 16% by 2023, touching almost US$647 million.

The Tech Panda spoke to Dibyendu Bindal, Founder and CEO of Mighty Foods, a plant-based protein, ready-to-cook range.

Our aim is to provide an easy-to-cook, tasty, convenient way to consume protein-rich healthy food

“There is a huge gap in what is available as plant-based food vs what people want to eat. In India, particularly, a majority of the population are suffering from protein deficiency. While people are aware about plant-based meat – the lack of taste, difficult accessibility, inability to cook – keeps them away from it. With Mighty, our aim is to provide an easy-to-cook, tasty, convenient way to consume protein-rich healthy food,” he says.

Inspiration

Bindal also started Freshezy, a ready-to-eat frozen foods products manufacturing company. His team saw a space in the nascent foodtech market and decided to fulfil the rising demand.

“The prevailing gap in easily accessible, tasty, plant-based meat and the growing demand of it amongst the general populace inspired us to start this venture,” he says.

The prevailing gap in easily accessible, tasty, plant-based meat and the growing demand of it amongst the general populace inspired us to start this venture

The beginning, he says, wasn’t without challenges.

“It’s a new segment which has no instruction manual or past case studies. People are in an experimental stage, where every day new raw materials, new processes are being developed. To get the correct taste using clean protein with good nutritional values has been challenging,” he adds.

The Mighty Foods USP

When it comes to competition, Bindal says that this nascent industry is an emerging category with a handful of companies.

“We believe in co-creating the segment together without any contention,” he says.

We believe in co-creating the segment together without any contention

As to the USP of their product, “Taste is the biggest differentiator for our product,” he says.

“We are one of the few companies who make their own food as compared to others who are getting it made at a third-party production facility. Our control over the manufacturing process gives us the advantage to be able to control the taste, texture, and flavours of the food,” he explains.

Growth Story

Presently, the focus of the startup is on customer awareness and increasing production capacity and reach. In sync with that, the company recently acquired a decade old company which introduced plant-based snacks.

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They are selling 1 ton of vegetarian and plant-based appetisers to the HoReCa segment and will soon launch the retail ready-to-cook products in this space.

“We were an early entrant in the segment. Objectively, we have a long way to go. That said, because the category is new – our success is measured in a different degree,” says Bindal.