JaggerCane offers a slew of jaggery-based snack products, including organic jaggery cubes, organic jaggery powder, coconut jaggery crumbs and almond elachi jaggery crumbs
The startup sells its products in the domestic market and also exports white-labelled products to Dubai, Spain and Canada
The Punjab-based D2C brand plans to expand its presence across the country, and will soon be launching its stores in Delhi-NCR
Diwali and mithai are still synonymous! Despite awareness, we don’t mind bingeing on traditional favourites such as chikki, laddu, jalebi, barfi and more. Coupled with the fact that sugar is the Achilles’ heel of the nation, unhealthy sugar eating is like a norm.
Also, finding healthy sweet snacks within the market is a tough row to hoe. One can blame the fast-paced lifestyle and quick snacking habits too that put nutritional discretion on the backseat, making India’s snacking industry a $60 Bn worth of the market in 2022.
Since most of the conventional snack items use white sugar, there is a growing demand for healthy sugar-free snacks. To address this demand, Navnoor Kaur and Kaushal Singh (who met during the former’s tryst with sugar-free eating) launched JaggerCane in 2021.
The Ludhiana-based startup offers a slew of FSSAI-approved jaggery-based products in the form of sugar substitutes such as cubes, powder and snacks including coconut jaggery crumbs, almond elaichi jaggery crumbs, granola, and pumpkin seed jaggery.
The startup started as a sole proprietorship in 2021 and JaggerCane soon took the D2C route to sell its products in the domestic market. It also exports white-labelled products to sellers across Dubai, Spain and Canada.
The products are priced in a way to make healthy eating affordable, and sold via omnichannel format (via the website, offline retailers and ecommerce marketplaces such as Amazon). Besides online selling, the startup entered the offline space and launched its flagship stores in Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Panchkula, where it offers all jaggery-based snack products.
The Product USP
JaggerCane has a farm-to-table model, wherein it has partnered with several sugarcane farmers-producer organisations (FPOs). It provides them with seeds, fertilisers and technical inputs related to organic farming.
To minimise the loss of sugarcane juice in the jaggery manufacturing process, JaggerCane also encourages farmers to set up processing units within their premises.
JaggerCane is primarily catering to the needs of health-conscious millennials and Indian households. So, it claims to use chemical-free jaggery while creating its vegan, gluten-free and protein-rich products.
What is interesting is that JaggerCane does not wash jaggery with sodium bicarbonate but cleans it through a natural process using the roots of okra (lady’s finger) to keep it unadulterated – a natural method called vegetative mucilage that prevents jaggery from turning stale.
Marketing Channels
In an interaction, Kaur told Inc42 that JaggerCane is currently focussed on raising awareness through product-tasting marketing. Since its product tasting initiative launched last year, the startup claims that seven of ten people who tasted its products converted to jaggery-based snacks to cut sugar consumption.
“Most of our brand-building exercise goes into our promotion through tastings itself. In B2C, we have started some paid ads and are getting good traction at D2C as well,” Kaur told Inc42.
The Ludhiana-based startup claims to be enroute for revenue of INR 1.5 Cr in FY23.
According to Singh, around 65% of JaggerCane’s revenue comes from white labelling, while the remaining 35% is earned through B2C and D2C sales.
White-labelling is a process wherein one company manufactures products and sells them to other companies that rebrands those products before selling to end-customers.
The Road Ahead
Within the $60 Bn market, JaggerCane competes with brands including Dhampur Green, Dr Jaggery, Happilo and Slurrp Farm in the highly-competitive D2C F&B market in the country.
The startup is essentially operating in the niche (D2C F&B) market, which is a sub-sector of the sugar snack industry dominated by small and big retail players. To attract more customers, Kaur said that JaggerCane has done extensive research and development and will be launching 20 more recipes (snack products) for consumers.
The startup plans to launch over 20 SKUs including granolas and milk enhancers in the coming few months, growing 1.5X from the past year.
It has the backing of the Punjab Government’s IMPunjab accelerator programme and has received an INR 3 Lakh experimental capital from the state government. The transaction is set to be completed by 2022. However, the startup is bootstrapped besides the INR 3 Lakh funding.
Yet JaggerCane is looking to raise investment to strengthen its operations and brand building.
As the startup moves towards market expansion after finding a product-market fit, it plans to expand and launch its stores in Delhi-NCR by the end of the financial year 2022.
