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Understanding the Power of Branding and Storytelling Through the Success of ‘iD’
The featured image is of pancakes. But in India, we have something similar that we call as ‘Dosa’. It looks like a pancake, but not so thick. There are many varieties of dosa. We usually have it for breakfast, and is the staple food for the South Indians.
Dosa is made from rice batter. In traditional Hindu households, they used to make the batter at home itself, using a stone rice grinder. But later, the local stores started selling the batter in unbranded transparent plastic bags and sold it for around Indian rupees 10–15. For people wondering how much that is, “It is very less, way less than 1 USD!”.
People started completely relying on the batter packets sold by the local stores.
No one questioned the hygiene and purity of these locally sold batter bags. But most importantly, no seller claimed it to be hygienic or pure by any standards!
Bangalore City(India), 2005
Bangalore is a true cosmopolitan city. People from all over India migrate to the ‘Information Technology’ capital of India for better opportunities. It is reflected in the food culture as well. You can find all kinds of food in Bangalore. There are a lot of start ups born from this city, and a respectable amount of them are food-based as well.
Bangalore people love dosa. There are legendary ‘Dosa places’ that will be crowded by the millennials on most of the days. But Bangalore people also love to spend the weekends, at least the mornings, on their homes, indulging in cooking healthy food for themselves.
Millennials of Bangalore are attracted towards brands. Be it anything, but if it is branded, it will sell in Bangalore. Especially the IT executives who have a lot of dispensable income, have the luxury to think about “Healthy Lifestyle”.
iD started as a small shed in Bangalore, selling 15–20 packs of Dosa batter from the shelves of ‘supermarkets’. Bangaloreans who were used to seeing the transparent white packets of rice better in local Kirana stores, were interested in this new avatar.
