We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ragoth Bala. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ragoth below.

Ragoth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Like in most startups, I was the first customer of the product we were going to bring to the market. While working full time and going to business schools in the evenings, I was struggling to eat right as a vegetarian living in Chicago. My mom had come to my rescue, all the way from India. She would send me dry-roasted ingredients pre-mixed in right proportions, making it easy for me to just add water and cook with just 5 minutes of effort. The best part – it was mom-approved, which meant there were no preservatives or artificial ingredients in the food.

There was nothing like that in the market and hence the idea of starting a brand came to be. From business school and previous startup experiences, I have always understood the power of MVPs – Minimum Viable Product. Instead of jumping into a full scale launch, my co-founders and I brought together a small group of alpha testers and then a slightly larger group of beta customers, all in an effort to quickly launch and tweak the offering. In these phases, we ended up tweaking everything from the product, to labels, to brand and even the price point, making it an MVP well worth its time and effort.

With the successful MVP. we then focused on getting PR coverage for the public launch. The coverage, even the smallest ones, can add a lot of fuel to the launch, especially in cases where we hadn’t raised outside capital before launch and hence had a limited budget to work with.

With these steps executed right, we made a public launch in Aug 2019. The first few months were slow, but the customer reviews and repeat rates gave us the confidence in the idea and pushed us to keep going further. We grew 10x in 2020 and used that momentum to raise Angel and Venture capital in 2021. We then entered the execution mode – building a team, hiring subject matter experts as consultants and gradually scaling up marketing spend.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

The Cumin Culinary Brands is on a mission to make authentic ethnic cuisines readily available throughout the world. As a Chicago-based, venture-backed ethnic food company, the company operates two innovative brands, The Cumin Club and The Cumin Bowl. The Cumin Club delivers soulful, vegetarian, chef-curated Indian dishes that go from packaging to plate in under five minutes. The Cumin Bowl is a fast-casual restaurant brand inspired by the soulful, nourishing flavors of India. For more information, visit www.thecuminclub.com and www.thecuminbowl.com.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When the pandemic hit, International logistics completely froze for a few weeks. It was 8 months into starting the business and we were almost sure that this would be the end of the business. We stopped taking orders, refunded existing orders and were in a state of complete despair. A few customers wrote back to us saying how much they loved the food and that they would order again when we are back in business. Those kind words kept us going and when the logistics were back in order we grew significantly. Many of us were working from home, but did not have the time to cook, so our 5-minute meal kits resonated well and we were glad we were resilient through the first few weeks of shutdown.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Authentic taste – we focused our initial efforts on authenticity – from working with regional chefs to sourcing ingredients from different regions of India. This resonated well with the early adopters, who were looking to break away from generic-Indian food that was offered in the market. India is multi-cultural and the food is as diverse as the people. By focusing on authentic recipes, we were able to resonate with multiple segments of customers, each happy with a different menu item.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thecuminclub.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_cumin_club/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecuminclubusa
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14042810/

Image Credits
Joe Guzzo