Alum Ventures: GetKrrackin – Varun Basu, PGSEM 2011
The food industry thrives on innovation and experimentation. People are always on a lookout for something new, something fun but with conscience eating, healthy has become another important factor. GetKrrackin is the newest player in the market ticking all the right boxes.
GetKrrackin is a food products company that offers roasted nuts in single-serve packs and various flavours. The brand appeal is itself very young and quirky with international flavour variants.
Varun Basu, Partner and Thinker Bee at Getkrrackin shares his entrepreneurial journey, his motivation and vision.
Every idea has a story, what was behind GetKrrackin ?
The genesis of GetKrrackin was from the extensive travel that Vineet, the founder of GetKrrackin and my partner, did over the 20 years of his corporate career. He (and most of us who’ve lived out of a suitcase at some point in our lives) used to always carry a Ziploc full of mixed nuts and dry fruits for those times when flights would get delayed, or you’d miss a connection or you ended up skipping breakfast due to lack of sleep or simply missed lunch because that review meeting went 2 hours over the allotted time.
Nuts especially Almonds are extremely nutritious – in fact, BBC in 2018 rated Almonds as the Number 1 Nutritious food in the world (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180126-the-100-most-nutritious-foods) and more importantly have a very long shelf life which means you can eat them 3, 6 or even 12 months after purchase and they will taste as good (provided they are stored properly!)
I think almost each one of us has grown up in a household where our mothers used to give us soaked almonds in the morning before we left for school – and we were forced to eat it because it was “good for us”.
Given the enormous benefits of Nuts, we also realized that there was a white space in India since Nut consumption in our country was limited to Chocolates and Sweets, with Nuts being predominantly purchased for gifting – that too in the festive season. Also Nuts were largely a commodity category where you had to but at least 500g or 1Kg packs – which were either raw or roasted salted. This made the product inaccessible to most of the country with consumption limited to special occasions or to the elite.
GetKrrackin was created as a young, fun, quirky and vibrant brand to celebrate the benefits of nuts, where the focus was not on the health attributes of the product instead on the fun occasions that it could be consumed at. The USP of the brand is that we do single serves of roasted seasoned nuts which allowed us not only democratize the pricing and make it accessible to the masses but also offer international flavours that were familiar to the Indian palate. Our vision is for GetKrrackin to be an integral part of everyone’s “snack pack” in their office, school or college bags!
What are the products and variants offered by Getkrrackin, and where can we get grab one of these?
GetKrrackin today has 3 flavours of Roasted Almonds and 2 Roasted Cashews available in the market. Apart from these 5 variants we have an assortment of gifting options that we do for corporates which also includes a first of a kind, hand made dark chocolate with roasted seasoned almonds (the very same flavours that we have launched in the market)
GetKrrackin is available in airlines such as SpiceJet, vending machines across corporates and tech parks as well as through e-commerce sites like Amazon, Big Basket and Grofers.
What motivated you to become an entrepreneur?
I think the simple answer is that it just happened – but looking back I believe the turning point would have been my experience with the first startup that I joined during my days at IIM Bangalore. That stint of almost two odd years was exhilarating – from creating a product, to finding a customer and closing the deal to finally implementing it with limited resources – was like a rush I had never experienced before. This was a far cry from the security and comforts of a job at a large IT corporate where I had only worked on “my core competence”.
There were many learnings from that first stint as an “entrepreneur”, but it set the foundations for who and where I am today. My motivators today are flexibility – allowing for work-life balance; and the ability to control (or have the illusion of controlling) our destiny and choosing how we grow our business.
What is the one thing about entrepreneurship no one tells you?
Probably the most significant thing that no one tells you is how you will be constantly challenged to work outside your comfort zone. As an entrepreneur, there is nothing that is “not your job” or thinking that someone else will do it. From making business plans to marketing strategies to solving supply chain issues to HR issues to PR bites – you will need to do it all at some point in your journey – because at the end of the day – it’s your journey!
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I enjoy travelling, spending time with friends and family, occasionally cooking and playing with Zoey, our 2-year-old golden retriever during my free time.
Any fond memories/ experiences from your days at IIMB.
The defining memory of IIMB for me is the image of me and my batchmates pacing between the library and the CPP block classes before the exams doing the last minute cramming -which now in hindsight almost always never helped! This is juxtaposed against the memory of all of us standing in the same place in our graduation gowns waiting to walk out to the grounds for the graduation ceremony.
On a lighter note and purely a personal memory, is my first class in Term 1 – which was FinAcc and I remember when the class finished and the prof left, the entire class sat dazed as the realization of what lay ahead for the next two and a half years sunk in. Oh what an incredible journey it was to be…..
If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
The cost of not doing or trying something is ALWAYS more expensive than trying and failing. If you feel strongly about something – go ahead and do it, after all, what doesn’t kill you makes you …stronger 😊.
