New Delhi, India – In February, as Meghana Narayan and Shauravi Malik watched sales figures come in for the organic baby food brand – Slurrp Farm – they had co-founded, they were certain that they would break even fairly quickly, a big achievement for a young startup.
Within weeks, that dream was shattered as India went into one of the world’s harshest lockdowns to rein in the spread of the coronavirus. The two entrepreneurs were plunged into a race to stop their business from imploding as revenue went down to almost zero.
As the coronavirus pandemic spread across the world, it decimated economies, jobs and livelihoods. India was not spared, especially with the sudden, overnight lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in late March. Businesses large and small had practically no time to prepare for a new, highly constrained world. But smaller firms were hit disproportionately hard.
“April was a no show for us,” recalls Narayan.
The pandemic forced many companies to retool and re-organise their businesses overnight in order to survive. Some, including Narayan and Malik’s, embarked on a radical overhaul. The result has been a company rebuilt practically from the ground up that has not only survived but is now thriving in the age of COVID.
“We had to change the DNA of our entire organisation,” says Malik. “It’s been the best of years and the worst of years … . It went from so s**t to so good so quickly,” she adds.
Change the DNA
Narayan and Malik left lucrative careers to set up Slurrp Farm in October 2016; Narayan had worked as an associate principal at consulting firm McKinsey while Malik was an investment manager at British airline billionaire Richard Branson’s family office.
The two mothers had struggled to find healthy food that was free from preservatives, refined flour and sugar for their toddlers and realised that other parents would be just as eager to buy such products, if they existed.
They started out with two products, cookies and baby cereals, and built up their range to 17, selling through more than 600 stores across multiple cities, and online. Slurrp Farm’s products now include packaged health foods and millet-based mixes for pancakes and dosas, light crepes made from a lightly fermented batter.
Their monthly revenue grew to 5 million rupees ($68,000) before everything was shut down.
Today, India has 9.9 million coronavirus cases, the second-highest number worldwide after the US. Back in March, the country was seeing its first cases and few predicted a strict lockdown coming.
But Narayan and Malik had been tracking developments and saw other countries shutting down. They also realised that fear of infection was making basic activities like buying groceries more…
Read More: This Indian startup has not only survived COVID, it is thriving |