Sweets & Bakery · Case study
A 62-year-old sweet shop becomes a packaged brand in four states
Three outlets with genuine local love, a three-day shelf life, and a founder's son who wanted national distribution without losing what made it loved.
- Client
- Kesar Mithai
- Location
- Ahmedabad, Gujarat
- Duration
- 14 months
- Engagement
- Brand Launch project + Growth Marketing retainer
Headline result
₹4.2 Cr → ₹19.6 Cr
Revenue
14 months, counter + packaged
The situation
What we walked into
Kesar's mohanthal and kaju katli had a devoted local following built over six decades, entirely through counter sales at three Ahmedabad outlets.
Two earlier attempts at packaged retail had failed: the first on shelf life, the second when a modern trade chain rejected the listing on non-compliant artwork and an unsubstantiated shelf-life claim.
The family had no costing for packaged goods. Counter margins had always absorbed the distributor and retailer margins that packaged sales would demand.
What we did
The engagement, phase by phase
Including the phase the client least enjoyed, which in most of our case studies is the second one.
Phase 1 · Weeks 1–4
Codify the halwai's judgement
A sensory panel benchmarked the founder's product, then we converted the recipe into measurable parameters — time, temperature, moisture, water activity, pH — with acceptance ranges. This became the specification every later scale-up step was tested against.
Phase 2 · Weeks 4–10
Shelf life without changing the product
Water activity management, nitrogen-flushed MAP packing and barrier film selection with the converter, validated by accelerated shelf-life studies at a NABL lab. Mohanthal reached 90 days and the khoya-based range 52, with both claims substantiated on file before any artwork was printed.
Phase 3 · Weeks 8–16
Positioning, pack architecture and compliance
Positioning built on the six-decade provenance rather than a generic 'premium sweets' claim. Three pack tiers — impulse, take-home and gifting — priced to survive full trade margins, with FSSAI and Legal Metrology declarations checked line by line, which is exactly where the previous attempt failed.
Phase 4 · Months 5–10
A plant for the festive curve
A 1.2 TPD line with chilled storage, sized for sustainable volume with a pre-build strategy for the Diwali peak rather than capacity that would idle for forty-six weeks. PMFME support of ₹9.6 lakh filed and sanctioned before the machinery order.
Phase 5 · Months 9–14
Distribution and demand
Modern trade listings in four states, a distributor ROI model that made appointment conversations straightforward, a D2C store for gifting, and WhatsApp retention flows. The demand engine was handed to an internal two-person team in month twelve with documented SOPs.
Measured outcome
The numbers, with their baselines
These are the metrics written into the engagement letter before work started.
3 → 90 days
Shelf life
Mohanthal, MAP packed, NABL substantiated
11 chains
Modern trade listings
Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, MP
+17%
Price realisation
Versus the pre-launch counter price per kg
₹9.6 lakh
PMFME subsidy
Sanctioned before machinery order
₹2.3 Cr
D2C gifting revenue
First full festive season
38%
Repeat purchase rate
D2C, within 90 days
Engagement visual
My father's worry was that we would industrialise the taste out of it. They ran a sensory panel on his mohanthal in the first week and made that benchmark the specification. He signed off on batch forty-one himself.
Sweets & Bakery
Bring us the version of this problem you have
We will tell you on the first call whether it looks like the engagement above, and roughly what the equivalent work would cost.
- Call
- +91 98765 43210
- Response
- Median 5h 40m in business hours