Love South Indian Snacks? Buy them online now!!

By Anoop Nair on October 11, 2014 25 Comments / 10212 views

Dear friends

How many of you are aware that we have a snack called Tapioca chips? or Jack fruit chips? I am sure most of the North Indians are unaware of such snacks as they are primarily produced and consumed in South Indian states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu. My newly started venture is something that will allow you to purchase similar South Indian snacks online and get it delivered at your doorsteps.

The purpose of this venture :

The purpose or main idea of this venture is to make South Indian snacks available to anyone who is interested in buying them. Most of the North Indian states do not have easy access to such products and making these snacks available to anyone who loves South Indian snacks is the purpose of this venture. Thank you Rahul Varshneya for your guidance when I needed it the most.

When we started :

We did our first sale on sept 1st 2014.

Progress so far:

We shipped more than 30Kgs of South Indian snacks till date.

Customers :

We have customers from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Ganganagar, Ludhiana, Indore, and few more cities.

International :

Yes, We have shipped our items outside India as well. We successfully completed two international orders in the past 30 days.

Marketing:

Till date I am using Facebook ads and Google adwords (I got free credits with my hosting :-)). Along with paid advertisements, I am also working on the SEO part as well.

So far, we have been doing great. The response from our target audience is really good and I believe we can scale it up to a great level.

Sorry I think I missed to mention my venture name. It is The South Indian Store (www.thesouthindianstore.com)

Please visit and give your feedback. Do make a purchase in case you are a foodie 🙂

Thanks!

PS: I have updated the post with a new image from my website.

Anoop Nair (Co-Founder | The South Indian Store, Selling South Indian Snacks online )

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+

******************Updates 17-Dec-2014******************

Adding some new product images from my website :

I would like to share in another post how I managed to get all these awesome product images almost free of cost. I do not own a SLR (:-)).

Another update is that I have purchased the domain www.southindianstore.com and now both www.thesouthindianstore.com and www.southindianstore.com points to the same website.

Thanks!

*********************UPDATE**************************

<13-Jun-2015> This is to inform all the fellow Rodinhooders that I was having discussion with someone who was willing to buy my business of selling south Indian snacks online and the deal was finalized last Sunday. I am no more in any way associated with selling of South Indian Snacks online. I do own the domain name though and may come up soon with something related. Watch out for more updates :-). Thank you all for your great support !!

Comments

Anoop Nair

25 Comments

asha chaudhry October 13, 2014, 4:34 am

i think it’s a brilliant idea anoop. will go to your site and definitely give you feedback on this!

ps: LOVE THE NAME! it’s open ended so you can expand later on 🙂
Anoop Nair October 13, 2014, 4:46 am

Thank you Asha

Yes, exactly.. lot of scope for expansion.

Thanks!
Hardik Khanna October 13, 2014, 12:29 pm

Great idea!

My feedback:

Recommend you to get a professional designer to work on the website – Photos need to be slick!

Btw ..why not have pics of Inian (south) models in the slider on the top of the page 🙂

Some points (I think) will make a difference ( you might have thought abt these ..)

1. Delievery time to be as less as possible – WIthin some cities if you can make it same day delievery then nothing like it.

Food is something that if you want to have…you want to have NOW!

2. Since the food item is fragile – wafers can break easily – so be very careful about packaging.

3. You can also work on different packaging to create a re-call. e.g. Packaging by Pringles OR

may be a decent quality plastic box with your branding on it. Remember … Indians do not throw away boxes 🙂 So as long they have the box with them they remember your brand 🙂

4. Mention something about quality standards followed. Helps increase customers confidence.
Anoop Nair October 14, 2014, 2:59 am

Hi Hardik

Thanks for your valuable feedback. I am already working on points #1 and #2. Your suggestion #3 is awesome. Will definitely work on that. #4 also noted. Also, your suggestion of having images of South Indian models on slider is also a good idea.

Thanks for all the suggestions you gave.
Hardik Khanna October 14, 2014, 5:58 am

Just another thought..

For customers like me who haven’t tasted many of south indian delicacies , except the known banana wafers or may be jack fruit wafers , you can send a sample of some other product with every order.

e.g. few pieces of Achappam with an order of Banana wafers to taste.
asha chaudhry October 14, 2014, 6:00 am

that’s a brilliant idea hardik!

in fact, anoop – try to use cute little packaging for the samples. like hardik mentioned – everything gets recycled in india. and trust me, the little stuff gets cherished forever by the little kids in the house (who are big influencers !!)
Anoop Nair October 14, 2014, 6:01 am

🙂 Another great idea.

Thanks!
Anoop Nair October 14, 2014, 6:01 am

Wow.. never thought that way.. Brilliant
Abhik Prasad October 14, 2014, 7:06 am

Hi Anoop,

This is a great idea and also reminded me of the south indian halwa from my bangalore days 🙂

There are a couple of things you can do:

1.) You could do with a better logo (we can help you with one at experiamedia.com )

2.) Blog: Since august, you haven’t really added any other blogs. Since you have 12 products, maybe you can start with 12 posts on each of them – describing them in more detail, how to make it at home etc. E.g. I typed achappam in google and it threw up a lot of recipes – You could hook in folks with recipes and then try and sell them stuff subtly

3.) On your fb page, you could share links about individual products and a direct link on your site where folks can buy them instead of just your site’s homepage

4.) Discounts and cash back – Since you are new, i would suggest ‘train’ your customers to buy from you on account of quality and convenience rather than low price (keep your prices low but don’t throw the discount or cash back as a bait to get new users)

All the best.
Anamika Joshi October 14, 2014, 10:43 am

Hey Anoop!

This just made the keralite in me super happy! Having born and brought up there and then being away from there since more than a decade, this idea is a perfect treat for me!

Coming to the feedback part, I guess you have kept only those items which remain edible within the time period you take to deliver them. Coz I could find some items missing. May be you are planning to add more to the list.

Regarding the website, I think you should get some really good developer to do it for you and the banners could be really more attractive and welcoming. The experience in online shopping counts a lot! Don’t compromise on that. There is a very short period between a person coming to your website and deciding whether to stay on it. Branding will also help you in this initial phase of establishing. Since you seem to have hit an untapped market (i am unaware of any such online store as of now), you could make the most out of it if you play well!

Luckily, I have a Kerala store nearby and in Delhi you will find many. Do sell all authentic stuffs, instead of just snacks, if you think its viable to you. Range of products play a great role in changing mindset of customers…

As I see that you have already done some good business, I wish you luck for more!
Karthik M Sundaram October 14, 2014, 11:06 am

Hi Anoop – The idea is brilliant. Do not restrict yourself to only kerala items – also stock Andhra, TamilNadu items (things liks pickles, dry chilly powder and even rice would sell well).

Also, in my opinion you can make better use of the website real estate and show the tempting snacks up front rather than after one scroll as is currently. This website does a good job of displaying fresh fruits and exotic items (http://www.greencart.in) – maybe you can take some cues from this.

One final point – try smaller pack sizes – to pay 225 for banana chips at one shot would not be easy for a vast majority.
Anoop Nair October 15, 2014, 3:47 am

Thanks Abhik

Will definitely work on your suggestions.
Anoop Nair October 15, 2014, 3:48 am

Thanks Anamika
Anoop Nair October 15, 2014, 3:48 am

Thanks Karthik

Will work on your suggestion.
Sandeep Koujalgi October 17, 2014, 8:00 am

Any reason for keeping ‘the’ in the name? In any case, suggest that you buy southindianstore.com also (without ‘the’) and set it to redirect to your store.
Anoop Nair October 18, 2014, 6:45 am

Hi Sandeep The time when I purchased thesouthindianstore.com, southindianstore.com was unavailable. But now since it is available, I purchased the same. Thanks for your suggestion. Will be re-directing it to the main site soon.
Anoop Nair December 16, 2014, 4:12 am

Guys!!

I have upgraded my website to a new version that is responsive and is bundled with lot many features that were unavailable in the previous version. Please give it a look and shoot your feedback!!

The South Indian Store

Thanks!
Anamika Joshi December 16, 2014, 5:39 am

Anoop, must say that the website looks much appealing now.. and thanks for adding more items to it!!! :)) Best Wishes!
asha chaudhry December 16, 2014, 6:48 am

anoop,

quick suggestion. instead of changing your existing images on your post here, you can update the post with today’s date and add new images of the new products.
Anoop Nair December 17, 2014, 5:47 am

Hey Anamika

Nice to hear you liked the new look. I made those changes after getting feedback from you people. There is a new addition to the website catalog today. Plum cake 🙂 Do visit.

Thanks!
Anoop Nair December 17, 2014, 6:13 am

Thanks for the suggestion Asha. I updated the post with the new images.
shivani January 7, 2015, 2:55 pm

Hi Anoop, Trying to get in touch with you. Pls check my website here http://www.CitynU.com . Its a food specialty store. Pls get in touch with me here info@citynu.com
Anoop Nair January 8, 2015, 2:07 am

Will get in touch with you Shivani.

Thanks!
Jaseem Thayal Shareef January 21, 2015, 4:16 am

That’s good up-selling idea, Hardik 🙂 Would love if you can review our product and provide your valuable insights – CrowdStudio
Anoop Nair June 13, 2015, 9:09 am

This is to inform all the fellow Rodinhooders that I was having discussion with someone who was willing to buy my business of selling south Indian snacks online and the deal was finalized last Sunday. I am no more in any way associated with selling of South Indian Snacks online. I do own the domain name though and may come up soon with something related. Watch out for more updates :-). Thank you all for your great support !!