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I remember the first time I had a baraf ka gola or ice lolly as it is known for the Anglophiles. I was seven and on summer holidays at my grandmother’s home in a small Punjabi town. Not only was it the most scrumptious thing to have in the heat, the fact that my mother did not permit us brothers having it off the street made it doubly delicious.

Sadly though, I cannot remember the last time I had it. It was just so long back. Why did I stop having it? I can’t remember. Maybe it was my mother’s constant bickering about the hygiene bit. Maybe I just grew out of it. I can’t seem to put a finger on it. Most probably, says Mumbai-based entrepreneur Sachin Jain, it was a combination of both. “An increasingly educated, health-aware population slowly weaned itself away from the street food of our childhood,” he says. “Plus, it was also less savvy in a wealthier India to be enjoying golas off a cart against sipping shakes and coffees in imported concepts of coffee shops and fast food restaurants.”

He is right. In a growing economy, with more disposable income and the influx of aspirational brands like McDonald’s and KFC, Indian fast foods, typically street foods, have been left behind at least in urban India. And this trend is spreading to the next rung of Indian cities, too.

Jain is, however, trying to change that in a small way with his chain of gola stalls under the brand name of ‘Go Gola’. The brand, which was established at the end of August 2008, this Mumbai chain offers the humble baraf ka gola in a cleaner, savvier avatar for the current generation of foodies.

“Everybody has loved golas, be it the elderly of our generation or Indians currently in their 20s,” he tells us. “It is the taste that always stays with you.” But to appeal to the current generation of children and more importantly their parents, the gola, as do other Indian fast foods, need to have changes made in both production and presentation.

Presentation is everything
It’s a well-known adage in the Indian food and beverage sector that presentation is everything. Indians are known to eat with their eyes first, the tongue next. Hence, the function of marketing in relation to Indian street food has gained more importance than before. Gone are the days when your chaat corner would not even have a takeaway menu.

In the increasingly competitive fast food sector with the likes of Subway and KFC now trying to go pan-India, entrepreneurs selling Indian fast food need to up their game. And for that, you don’t always need the big money. Jain himself found a unique way to catch eyeballs. His logo for Go Gola, then known as Gogola, was designed exactly the way as the logo for Google, the search engine behemoth.

“It immediately caught the casual passerby’s attention,” he says. “People were compelled to come to the stall to at least check out what this was all about and then, maybe even try out a gola.” Though Jain changed the branding after a year, the branding had caught sufficient enough eyeballs for the chain to be now very well-known in Mumbai.

Branding is what helped T. Ganapathy, Founder and Chief Managing Director, Dosa Plaza chain of fast food outlets, also take a step up from being just another South Indian chain in Mumbai. Ganapathy’s story in itself is very inspirational and worthy of an entire book of its own. Having come to Mumbai from Tamil Nadu in the early 90’s, an abandoned Ganapathy worked himself up from being a dishwasher to setting up the first Dosa Plaza in 2003. “I used to run a south Indian eatery at Vashi station (Navi Mumbai) and this mall was coming up right next door,” he says.

“The staff working at the mall, including its marketing manager, would eat at my eatery at that time. They helped me set up my first fast food joint inside the mall.”

Once inside the mall, however, Ganapathy realized that an image of a clean south Indian restaurant would not be good enough to attract eyeballs. He would need a change of image. He then approached, at the advice of the mall management, an young creative agency at that time called Think WhyNot, which gave the restaurant its big makeover. Prem Sagar Dosa Plaza became Dosa Plaza, the logo was changed to be more vibrant and colorful, a character called Dr.D to represent a wizard chef of sorts was created and everything from cutlery to uniforms was reinvented. This was the actual game changer, according to Ganapathy.

His humble south Indian eatery was now branded on the lines of a McDonald’s, a brand he had studied for long, to be more appealing to its customers. The footfalls steadily increased and a trickle soon resembled a rush.

Today, there are almost 32 Dosa Plazas in Mumbai out of the 80 all over India. There should be about 150 by the end of the year, says Ganapathy. There are also two franchises in New Zealand. Ganapathy believes most entrepreneurs in the field of Indian fast food did not adapt quick enough to a changing paradigm, like he did. “The modern Indian consumer may eat at the small eatery in the bazaar, but what he really aspires to are the malls and the multiplexes, today’s new hangouts.”

Location. Location. Location.
Ganapathy is right. Urban Indians now increasingly shop and eat at malls, especially in northern India. Given that malls offer the average consumer shopping and eating under one air-conditioned roof, the idea of going somewhere else to eat is mostly rejected. It is also a question of the consumer’s income. With the average Indian earning more and more every year, the number of people visiting high traffic locations such as malls and multiplexes is always going to be increasing.

While older shopping hubs like South Extension in New Delhi, Colaba Causeway in Mumbai and M.G. Road in Bengaluru are still attracting footfalls, they don’t give fast food chains as much relative exposure to the consumer as a mall would. Even the upstart Go Gola is awake to this reality.

“We tried many locations before we settled on our current 10 locations in Mumbai,” Jain tells us. “Almost all of them are located in malls and multiplexes while a couple are in regular, but high traffic retail locations.”

Jain tells us that besides offering a steady flow of repeat as well as casual consumers, malls also lend an air of credibility to those chains which are offering Indian fast food, which is essentially street food served in a different ambience.

Jain might have a good point here. The modern, urban consumer cares a lot more about what standards of quality the chain possesses and when they see a chain in a reputed mall, there is always the feeling that if its in this mall, it must be safe and of good quality. But the question of quality goes beyond what the location has to say, says Jain. A lot also needs to be altered in the preparation to be able to offer what Indian consumers want.

Make Mine Good and Many
While the average Indian consumer may have become savvier when it comes to eating out, he does still care about getting the bang for his buck. And in today’s age it means two things, safety and variety. Go Gola’s Jain was always alert to this line of thought when he started out selling an item that was traditionally sold off cart using regular water, colored sweet syrups and burlap-covered slab ice.

Knowing that today’s parents keep an eye out for safety and quality in what their children eat, Jain made a big change away from the traditional gola in terms of hygiene.

“We use mineral water and ice made from mineral water. The syrups are made from fresh fruits. Our staff wears gloves and there is a high level of hygiene maintained at the stalls.”

Consequently, Jain has observed that a majority of his patrons are from the age group of 8 to 16. “Parents, who once loved the golas themselves, know that their kids are safe when they eat at a Go Gola outlet. And when a parent recommends your offering to his children, it is always a big bonus.”

Wanna be a McDesi?
There is clearly a lot of space in India for entrepreneurs operating in the fast food space. According to estimates by the Worldwatch Institute and other organizations, the entire fast food industry in the country is growing at almost 35 percent to 40 percent a year. But the growth has largely been concentrated to the metros and there is large room for growth in tier II and tier III cities where the masses live.

Kiran Nadkarni, Founder and CEO, East West Ethnic Foods Pvt. Ltd., the company that runs the Kaati Zone brand of fast food outlets, says entrepreneurs would need to pick the right format for penetration into untested towns. “In the urban scenario, where outlets may be stands or kiosks, which may provide no shelter or seating, are apt given the high real estate rates,” he says. “But in the second-rung cities, the quick service restaurant [QSR] format would work far better given the low real estate rates and the aspiration value they offer to people in these places.”

Whatever maybe the format though, Nadkarni emphasizes that no degree of success can be achieved if the back-end operations of the chain is not efficient and stable. He explains how for Kaati Zone, which was set up in 2004, the company has taken its time in expansion for the first five years, primarily to fist firm up the back-end operations of sourcing, production and distribution.

“We currently have 15 outlets, including one each at the international and domestic airports in Mumbai,” he adds. “Now that we know that our operations at the back-end are firm, we can expand out outlets.”

Dosa Plaza’s Ganapathy is well aware of this requirement. On the cards for his firm is a central distribution system on the lines of brands like KFC that will ship pre-packaged masalas and mixtures to both franchisees as well as the owned outlets.

New entrepreneurs in this space, however, should stick to the three-point mantra for all formats and cuisines, Nadkarni tells us. “Quick service, consistency in the product and moderate pricing are the three things they must stick to. Only then will they make it beyond the first five years of operations.”

©Entrepreneur July 2010

Tags:
Dosa Plaza, East West Ethnic Foods, fast food, Go Gola, Indian, Kaati Zone, KFC, Kiran Nadkarni, McDonald's, QSR, quick service restaurant, street food, T. Ganapathy, Think WhyNot