This Corn:- Making movie snacking better

Why This Corn?

It all started with an idea to provide an EXPERIENCE. Current market scenario around Corn as a snack is very much limited. Market serves very monotonous taste with substandard packaging which customers anyway buy as healthy snacking. This Corn aims at creating experience for its customers by experimenting with rigid ways of Corn making, adding lip-smacking flavors and serving the corn in appealing packaging.

We identify ourselves as

We are a new healthy fast food, which provides the Indian market with savory corn delights from across the world.

The journey

Started working right after graduation but always had a dream to create something of my own. I was trying to understand and figure out what. Idea of food that was tasty and healthy excited me.  I did a lot of white boarding to understand the process and finally decided to start the journey with This Corn. It was not an easy journey, but it was worth. Like a mother, I conceived the idea of UPGRADING the Corn for around 9 months. Not many understood what I was trying to do. Lot of people thought I had lost my brains behind trying to be an entrepreneur. I had conceptualised the idea but then it was time to make ideas into reality. We created different flavors with the help of skillful people and called in for tasting sessions. As someone who doesn’t belong to food and beverage industry, you rely on the reviews from your tasters. For me, my friends and family was my experimental zone. Every time I discovered a new flavor, I’d call a tasting session. After a certain point, everyone around me accepted the idea of differently tasting sweet corn and started giving their feedback. It was a big morale push.  Reviews were largely optimistic encouraging us to move ahead.

Actual journey began then. There was a lot we had to figure out. Who would cook the Corn and serve? When you are a bootstrapped startup, you look forward to hiring a person who would work for more than money. Along with skills, qualitative intent for commitment becomes important to you.  You would want like minded individuals who’d understand your product and will lead their own forte to take product to a new scale.

Enters the Brand Manager

“Being a self-funded entrepreneur is like being a monk. You are on your own. You walk your journey without fear of losing anything or shying away from anyone. I’ve always believed in taking chances and they mostly click.”

~ Sonali Wyawhare, Brand Manager

Once I got the people I wanted, came the next question; “Where do we sell the product?” We wanted a place where we could get maximum visibility along with maximum sell, a place where we could experiment with our product. A Mall’s food court was the obvious choice for us considering number of people going to mall. We spoke to 30+ malls across Mumbai to get response from around 7 places. Renting space at malls is never as easy as it seems. Rents were anything between INR 80,000 to INR 120,000 a month making it impossible for us to even think of it. We almost got a place at one of the leading malls, which cancelled the deal on last moment since their existing vendors decided to stay back. Finally, we got a breakthrough. We opened our first ever counter at Andheri station.

When you have no history, you need to make people aware about yourself and your product. Sonali, who believed in us & joined us as the Brand Manager right from the first day of This Corn did the magic here. We created campaigns like “BhuttaEvolution” & “BeLikeThis” with which we created our patrons at colleges like Rizvi, S.P. Jain, and NM.

Another successful campaign was #9on9, where all our flavors of corn would be sold at 9 rupees on 9^th of every month. There was also League of Corns, yet another brilliant campaign, where we had flavors fighting against each other to be flavor of the day. These campaigns caught lot of attention and got us Brand recognition we wanted. We created new flavors, new snacks including sandwiches, pizzas, burgers with Corn. We got a lot of love from people for our new dishes.

Level Up

We had audience. But we were hungry. This corn was meant to reach out to masses and just one store wasn’t enough for that. Next destination was multiplexes. We saw it as a great market as Corn is one of the most consumed items in multiplexes. Since there were hardly any brands offering Sweet Corn with more than butter, pepper and salt; we seized the opportunity. We walked in to Carnival cinemas with our products and held a tasting session. Our products were loved and we were instantly given space to start.  We were little nervous initially, but managed to break-even after first few months. Our first counter started at Carnival cinema Oshiwara. As of today we are working with all major cinema players including PVR, Miraj, and Mukta A2 at 20 locations including Gujarat. Latest to join the bandwagon of biggies is INOX with This Corn launching at its Gujarat outlets soon. If things work in our favour, we will have 40 outlets in just Mumbai and Gujarat in next few months.

Way Ahead

We are currently enjoying what we are doing. Having said that, we are now going beyond what we have already created to stay ahead of market.  We are in talks with lot of franchisees who are more than happy to operate This Corn counters with all the variety of Corn items and salads we do. We are also working around Chaat line up as it remains one of the most consumed and highly non-branded market. We are also launching ready to eat Creamy Corn Cups very soon which will provide the same taste and feel which our patrons are used to at our live counters.

In longer runs, we are planning to tie up with healthy snacking partners and mark our presence beyond cinemas. You can check Our website

Recognition

With the pace at which This Corn extended and what we did & how well we did it, This Corn won the first prize at the Start-up Fest conducted in Mumbai in January.

 
Brains behind This Corn

Harshal has been a speaker at #StartupSaturday which is the starting point of his journey as 7 years ago when he had come to Mumbai he had attended one such meet and had decided to start something of his own. You can connect on harshal@thiscorn.in