How Yu Is Blending Taste & Nutrition To Pep Up Packaged Foods

The brand is reimagining processed foods to come up with ‘clean’ instant meals

For some people, food is a passion, but Bharat Bhalla and Varun Kapur are food enthusiasts with a difference. They love to explore food items which are wholesome, tasty and affordable. When looking at different food technologies and their benefits, the duo came across lyophilisation or freeze-drying, where the water is removed from a product after it is frozen, allowing the ice to change from solid to vapour. This process keeps food fresh and naturally preserves its nutritional characteristics, unlike traditional packed foods containing artificial preservatives. So, the founders decided to invest in lab-scale equipment for freeze-drying, put together an R&D team and launched Yu (Ikayu Foodlabs), a D2C brand making instant meals.

Yu has sold more than 1.5 Mn meal bowls, including pasta, noodles, halwas and oats. It is currently present on the e-grocery platform BigBasket and quick-commerce marketplaces like Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart. The brand also sells its products through 1K+ brick-and-mortar stores in Delhi-NCR and has gone beyond Tier 1 cities. The D2C brand claims its sales and distribution network has grown multifold since its launch, helping it expand to more than 2K physical locations in Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Dehradun, Srinagar, Guwahati, Aizawl, Imphal and other non-metro cities. It also caters to SpiceJet and Alaska airlines.

The ready-to-eat food brand makes a wide range of instant meals, keeping health (food quality), taste and convenience in mind. Yu says all its products are made with 100% natural ingredients and contain zero preservatives and additives. Moreover, its freeze-drying technique helps preserve food freshness better and ensures a shelf life of 12 months at room temperature.

Yu will further expand its product range, grow its offline presence in the west and southern India and focus more on the B2B/institutional segments such as airlines, railways, defence units and hospitals.