Shark Tank India-Featured Beyond Snack Opens Its Factory In Karnataka

Home Four years ago, Shark Tank startup Beyond Snack catapulted to fame for giving a whole new look and feel to banana chips. A year after raising its first round of funding, the startup has opened a new plant in Karnataka. Tumkur district quadruples its capacity to 600 tons per month. CNBC TV 18 Jude Sanit checks into the plant and speaks to Beyond Snacks Co founders on what it means for revenues and market expansion. Here's a slice of that conversation. I have to ask you, 600 ton capacity is what you're looking at. Put that in context and perspective for me. Why were you before the plant was set up and how do you scale up really with the new plant? Currently I've already established a 200 tons line which is almost a double the capacity of my existing capacity. And in another one year of timeline you will see it going to a 600 ton, which is almost four times than my existing facility, what I had a couple of months back. For a business, it means approximately some 35 to 40 CR kind of a business per month. All right, I'm glad you mentioned the number because I was going to ask you next, how do you plan to scale up the business? I know for a fact that your capacity explodes really with regard to this plan. You have plans this ample space of putting a couple of more lines. So where does business scale up really and how do you go about achieving that? We managed to scale up every year. We are actually growing twice as that of we are doubling our revenue compared to the previous year. But what we are seeing is from the market is that there is a huge demand out there. We need to really monetize this at this scale. We need to increase the scale of the growth and that is the really the reason why we are we are planning to set up couple more lines in this facility. So what is its revenue scale up likely? To be honest, I read somewhere you're targeting 100 crore in revenue. This was skill. If you could just breakdown these numbers for me and talk about what kind of growth plans you have for the brand this financial year end. We are actually planning to target revenue run rate of monthly revenue run rate touching an AR of 100 crores. What the plan is this financial year end? All right, you don't have to ask you Jyoti. It's a very expansive plant that you have with processes neatly laid out. There is of course a proper supply line that you've got going for you. What is the speciality of the plant itself? I hear there's a fair bit of automation, very minimal interaction with regard to humans itself. If you could just take me through some of the key features of your new plant here in Tumkur. My supply chain wise, my overall servicing time has significantly go down, went down. If you talk about the in house factory, right, you have seen that the from the entry till the end, nobody's touching the product. It's a zero hand touch product. I have full control in this factory. Second thing is, as we always promote our product as one of the thinnest chips and the most highest quality product, right, You would see that we cut approximately at a level of less than, you know, one MMM thickness with such a great technology and innovation. So I would put that as a whole front that the third part is the technology and innovation in the factory's top most. Nothing can be that kind of quality when you have such a great technology. So how many plant workers at the moment work here and do you plan to scale up those numbers? What is the future looking like in terms of your workforce at the plant? So currently I have 20 + 150, right, direct plus indirect people. That's only for one line. We are already running in three shifts of operation. We run 24/7 except Sunday. So this line is fully ramped up. The scale will go three or four times based on how many. Manas, over to you. I know for a fact that you spoke about distribution being a key part of the kind of work these ten states. What's the expansion plan like More so on the distribution front, you have spoken in the past about ramping up distribution to a large extent to go to new markets. Talk to me about those plans, how are they shaping up and what kind of timelines are you looking at? So look at snack as a as a category, right? You know, snack is always an impulse buying product and the success of any snack product is depending on how well you are placed closer to the consumers and how well you are visible in front of the consumers, right. You know that is what the GT general trade is going to be a much more complementing channel trade channel company like or a brand like us and beyond. Stand from the beginning itself was always very pro about you know focusing on GT on the distribution standpoint. Right now we are at around 125 distributors at present when we are talking and this year we will be adding another 50 to 8 and the next year we are looking to close somewhere goes to five hundred 450 to 500 distributors and that is the scale that we are actually planning. We have raised $3.5 million from nap Vengers last year and we are actually growing post that. Until then we were always growing at a, at a, at a we were we were not able to give that at befitting growth until that moment. And after that Nagpanga sound we've grown substantially and we are still growing. So coming back to the point right, you know going forward also we think that OK, this category requires much more attention and I am sure that more players are going to enter into this category first law. But you know, what we have noticed always is that banana chips never got it deserving attention because the product which is available out there was always, you know, it was locally manufactured without any sort of standardization, without any sort of, you know, hygienic process established. Now that we are bringing it into a much more organized and a branded format with the trust of quality, this category is going to explode and we are happy to say that we are pioneering in that particular event or that task. So do you have a funding number in mind, in a timeline in mind in terms of the future? Yeah, absolutely. So going forward, we will be raising a more couple more rounds. So we will be looking at round, you know, I'm not sure, I'm not sure whether I can, you know, come up with a proper number. But yeah, definitely we will be raising another round probably an year within a year time frame or something. And probably, you know, around 10 mil or above is the number that we probably may look for to give the befitting growth through the beyond. On that note, it's time for us to head into a short break. But coming up next, it's World MSME Day and in a bid to raise awareness.