There are chocolatiers everywhere in every city. However, there is nobody else in the market today who has taken the route that we have taken. We are different from the typical FMCG companies like Nestle or Cadbury.
For instance, Cacobean as a brand cannot be found on any shelf or as a finished product in any retail. We have taken the route of private labeling.
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Opportunity Spotting
Hotels have a big demand for chocolates. Many of them know how to make them but they cannot handle beyond a certain volume. Making them is labour intensive work and requires a lot of time. A regular chef who has other routine work to do will not have time to prepare them.
We saw an opportunity in this predicament of hoteliers. We supply them semi-finished products and raw chocolates with a soft core cut of specific dimensions and sizes. Hotels process it further and sell it as a finished product.
In the industry today, we have made a mark as institutional suppliers. And riding on this early success, we are ready to roll out our own branded chocolates.
Process As USP
We address another pain point in chocolate manufacturing industry. We make use of automated processes. Take for instance, the 25 mm diameter truffles that we make in our completely automated facility, are all centre filled which in itself is unique because making a chocolate with a soft centre filling is a pretty complicated process. And you can’t really do volumes manually. We have a machine, which is completely automated to do the process. Chocolates, thus made by us, serve as the raw material for the institutional customers. They buy the chocolate which is, say, 20 mm, 25 mm or 27 mm in diameter and which has a soft core. They then garnish or enrobe the chocolates to sell as finished products.
The most complicated part is already done by the machine. They are sold by us as semi-finished products in bulk. Our customers do not have to go through the pain of moulding, melting and the process of center filling. They buy 80 per cent finished product and do the last 20 per cent manually.
The biggest advantage of working with us is we have developed our own unique filling which otherwise has to be imported or bought locally at a steep price. Our fillings have one year's shelf-life. We have a neutral filling which can be customised to suit anybody’s requirement. We just have to add the natural flavors and customize it for end-users’ requirements.
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Extending to Corporate Gifting
The other part of the business is corporate gifting. We work with the likes of Johnson & Johnson, Van Heusen, United Breweries Group, Whyte & Mackay to name a few. We also cater to banks like ICICI bank and HDFC bank. Gifting during Diwali or Christmas day are our typical seasonal businesses. Jewelery industry have the practice of gifting their loyal and high-value customers round the year. That’s a good market for us. We started with 2000 boxes a year and now it has gone up to 50,000 boxes.
Origin
Cacobean’s parent company, India Cocoa is in the business of cocoa for the last 19 years. That was what motivated us to look at chocolate as a business. We source beans from farmers and process them. And the beans are sold as a product.
It came into existence three years back. It took us one and a half years to actually formulate the design and the format in which we wanted to enter the market.
Cacobean is a private limited company, with stakes and investments from all the directors. It is an expensive business for anybody to get into because there is no domain expertise in India which we can easily tap. We had to depend upon external sources, which were expensive.
| Fact File |
| Company Name: Cacobean Chocolatier Pvt. Ltd. Business Domain: Chocolate Manufacturing CEO: Sarin Patrick Started: 2007 Headquartered: Cochin, Kerala, India Turnover: Confidential |
| Take Aways |
| Opportunity Spotting: 1. Demand in Hotels cannot be met with manual units. Center filling automated process removes a big pain point in the industry 2. Take private labeling route |
| USP |
| 1. Our center-filling process 2. Customized natural flavours |
| Must Do |
| 1. A good market survey 2. Gap analysis 3. Efficient mapping of resources |
Today, our infrastructure, products and business strategies are in tune with global markets and we can cater to anyone, anywhere. We can even cater to a retailer in Europe or Middle East.
In the last one and half years we have already touched the major retail giants. We import raw materials; we buy our chocolates from among the best companies of the world, from Singapore and Belgium.Value addition
We are one of the few chocolatiers who are based in Kerala, the land of spices. And we have come up with innovative ways of incorporating natural ingredients like chocolates with cinnamon, clove, chili, pepper. It has been very well accepted and this is something we plan to launch across the country at airports as a brand.
We are in the process of negotiating with people who want to take it up as a brand of their own. Everything is ready, we only need to take a call on whether it would be our own or should it be marketed and sold and distributed by somebody else.
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written by cellphone, March 18, 2011
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