Putting the Genie Back in the Bottle

Good health is good business and sometimes, good business can also be very good health,” began Anuj Rakyan, who belongs to the young breed of entrepreneurs who have found a way to market their passion. The importance of maintaining a healthy diet and keeping fit “was ingrained in [him] from a very early stage by my family.” And because “you automatically learn more about something that you are passionate about,” it is not surprising that he has been able to set up the successful Raw Pressery.

But the realisation of a “lifestyle deficit” still doesn’t encourage the Indian consumer to make at home what can be bought readymade. It is this trait that makes good health, good business.

“Good health” as a business is “related to food and beverage, wellness in terms of spas, meditation centres, or anything that takes you to a journey within, and exercise.” Currently, the health business, specific to food and beverage, is valued at 12.5 crores. Milk overtakes oil in this segment, followed by flour. Together, they experience second only to biting into freshly picked fruit.

Raw Pressery has attracted not only the youth, but even those above the age of fifty. To account for that, Mr. Rakyan said, “large amounts of our preferences and tastes have changed, driven by lifestyle, consciousness, and deficiencies.” Just as rural India’s attention to health is due to a nutritional deficit, urban India’s focus on health has arisen because of a “lifestyle deficit.”

Raw Pressery is a startup that delivers cold pressed fruit and vegetable juice to 18 cities in India. It has managed to bridge the gap created by the very advanced stage of consumerism that we live in: “We get absolutely everything in our retail segment, but not an honestly healthy beverage,” Rakyan stated. If you missed the free samples of the “raw” juice that were made available at the Taj Ballroom, you missed tasting a wholesome fruit juice, aptly marketed as an constitute around 70% of the food and beverage segment. In fourth place is noodles, a market that began growing rapidly after the Maggi debacle. However, it is no surprise that the most consistent performer is green tea.

It is no wonder that “white bread has been replaced by brown bread; green tea has replaced chai; hummus is the new ketchup, and Greek yogurt has made its way into our lives.” Moreover, gone are the days when morning walks had a very simple principle attached to it: From being more of a communal activity, people have begun to realise that it has to be measured. For companies in the business of good health, this shift can be highlighted as an important consumer trend. However, for Rotarians who contribute to this trend, Mr. Rakyan says, “I encourage you to be investigative and suspicious, and do not fall for what the packaging tells you.”

Thus, it was not surprising that someone in the audience was curious to know why the expiry limit mentioned on the label of a bottle of Raw Pressery juice has recently been increased from three days to twenty-one days. In answering the question, Mr. Rakyan was able to throw light on the technological advancements that his research and development team have made to protect the nutrients found in raw farm produce. Raw Pressery are proud owners of the largest High Pressure Processing Machine in Asia, which allows them to hamper the growth of bacteria and pamper us with nutrient rich juice – the best way to put the genie back in the bottle.