The Startup CPG Podcast


In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, host Daniel Scharff sits down with his longtime friend Gulrez Arora, founder of Gymkhana Fine Foods, the retail brand born out of London's two-Michelin-star Gymkhana restaurant, to talk about building a global premium Indian food brand from scratch.


Gulrez and Daniel first met working together at Mars, where Gulrez spent nearly a decade in strategy roles across Asia Pacific chocolate and later ran an internal innovation and venture studio program. That experience taught him how hard it is to manufacture true founder energy inside a large corporation, and eventually led him to London, where a chance introduction to the founders of JKS Restaurant Group (the team behind Gymkhana) sparked the idea of bringing the restaurant's uncompromising culinary standard into center store.


Daniel and Gulrez dig into the year-long process of translating Gymkhana's restaurant recipes into shelf-stable products without cutting corners, the hybrid in-house and co-packed manufacturing model built to protect quality, why the brand has driven outsized category growth and incrementality everywhere it launches, and how lessons from Mars and consulting shaped Gulrez's approach to scaling in both the UK and the US.


Listen in as they discuss:

  • How Gulrez's decade at Mars, including running an internal venture studio, shaped his instincts as a founder
  • The serendipitous introduction to JKS Restaurant Group that led to the Gymkhana retail partnership
  • Why the team waited over a year to launch, refusing to bring a product to market they weren't fully proud of
  • The multi-layered, restaurant-style cooking process behind Gymkhana's sauces, and why there are no shortcuts
  • The hybrid manufacturing model, with 40 to 50% of products made in-house and the rest co-packed
  • Gymkhana's current product lineup, from simmer sauces to marinades, and what's coming next
  • Why the brand has driven 900% category growth in the UK, with the majority of sales fully incremental
  • How Gymkhana's in-store activation strategy, especially near meat and poultry, drives trial and repeat purchase
  • The differences between building awareness in the UK versus the US, where Indian food is less culturally embedded
  • Gymkhana's $8.5 million Series A with CAVU Ventures, and how that partnership has shaped the brand's growth


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Creators and Guests

Host
Daniel Scharff
Founder/CEO, Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Gulrez Arora
We have this hybrid model also because we couldn't find anybody to make it to our spec. So when you're tasting Chimkana's famous butter masala sauce that's actually made by our chefs, it's the same chef that was in the gymkhana kitchen for 10 years. And now obviously we have a production facility and we're doing millions of units out of that. So we've scaled that operation but the obsession on product has been so high that we actually had to put up an entire infrastructure to make sure that we're cooking the sauce like a restaurant does. It's multi layered. We cook the base, we cook the main, we cook the finisher. There's literally no shortcuts. When I say this is the restaurant level, this is actually the restaurant sauce.

00:50
Daniel Scharff
Welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. Today we are diving into a brand that is making some serious waves. Gymkhana Fine Foods comes out of the famous two Michelin star Gymkhana restaurant in London and they've now launched nationwide in Whole foods and Sprouts. Here in the US they've raised an 8.5 million Series A with Kavu which is famous for the growth and sale of poppy. Today's guest is my friend, it's founder Gulrez Arora who's going to talk to us about building a global premium Indian food brand. Also translating a Michelin starred restaurant into retail and what it's like to launch in the US market as well as comparing it to their growth in the UK versus American grocery channels.

01:31
Daniel Scharff
I especially love talking about Gulrez background and some of his formative experiences because when you see something like this that looks like such a rocket ship brand, it's so interesting to me to hear how it really came about, what it took to get it off the ground. All right, without further ado, here we go. Gulrez, my friend, I'm very happy to have you on the podcast. First of all, who would have thunk it that years ago when you and I met back in the Mars Chocolate office. That's right, in Mount Olive, New Jersey. That must have been about 10 years ago. To this day, who would have thought that we'd be sitting here on a podcast together? But actually I guess I could see it. You always had such good taste. You had big dreams.

02:17
Daniel Scharff
So looking back, you feel like you're where you always hoped you might be. Did you have any idea?

02:22
Gulrez Arora
Likewise, man. We were both destined to do our own thing and that's what were doing. So that's great, man. It's great to see that. We had an amazing foundational building years at Mars. I still look back at that. As you learn the game, you see the opportunity, the white space has become very clear. And then when timing is right I met my now business partners and we said okay, let's go and build something really special. Something that is very special to me. It's close to my heart, it's close to my home and something that I think was much needed in the world. So yeah, very excited.

02:50
Daniel Scharff
It's very exciting. Everybody is very excited to see you guys grow in the market. Can you just tell me a little bit more about the background because you and I knew each other about at Mars Chocolate and then I left and you left at some point but I am not totally caught up on what you were up to in those years in between that really prepared you to do this. So take me back, tell everybody the whole Gulrez story.

03:11
Gulrez Arora
Yeah, so was at Mars for about a decade were doing strategy. Then after that I moved to Asia. I was in Hong Kong, Singapore working on Asia Pacific Chocolate Strategy which sounds like the coolest title but I was really growing that chocolate market in that region. Moved back to America. That's when I was back in New York and was leading a charter on innovation. So this was really around partnering with high growth startups. We started a venture studio model within Mars which was building the future across pets, pet food, pet care, confectionery and human food. We also built an accelerator program. So all these kind of like what you call in a corporate language Horizon 2, Horizon 3 Innovation led ideas and I think it was very, always very close to what where I always saw myself and where I wanted to be.

04:01
Gulrez Arora
So it was a very natural thing that a program really I built within Mars and then I was running it and through that journey it became very clear that as amazing as these big corporates are and how much wealth of knowledge and information they have, building the net new within a large corporate is probably the hardest thing you can go and undertake. And you know man, Mars is built to make bigger. They're not really built to make, to create the new. Which is great because the startups do that and then they hopefully exit. And that's how a lot of the growth happens in big CPGs. Became very obvious when I was there that this is who I was. I'm a builder, I'm a creator.

04:39
Gulrez Arora
But trying to do that within this massive kind of corporation was not where I was going to find my core calling. And I was on Paternity leave, moved to London with Mars and I got introduced to my now business partners who run a restaurant group called JKS Restaurant Group. It's one of the most successful restaurant groups in the UK and now actually expanding globally. Gymkhana is a hero asset. It's anchor brand. I'd say it's one of the crown jewel restaurants within the group, honestly. Met them as friends. So when I moved here, somebody was kind enough to offer me an intro to them and I was like, yeah, I want to meet those guys. Because I could never get a reservation there. So I was like, hook me up. That's the greatest intro of all time. What a soft landing in London.

05:24
Gulrez Arora
Met those guys, Joe and I. Joe is the CEO of the restaurant group and I became very good friends and started just hanging out and just riffing on ideas. And listen, these guys are phenomenal restaurant operators, but they were always curious about the retail side. And I obviously don't know a lick about restaurants, but I knew consumer game and I think it was in 2022 I had actually seen Carbon launch and there was something that was just always in the back of my mind around what does a true global modern Indian brand looks like that is premium, that is not diluted, that is not like compromised on any segment. And I saw the experience I would have when I was at Gymkhana in London and I was like, man, these guys are doing Indian food at a level not just from a culinary.

06:11
Gulrez Arora
It's the whole package was nothing like I'd ever been like felt as a consumer. Even though I grew up in Delhi and there's some amazing food in Delhi, but the whole 360° the way they used to execute it was phenomenal. And I was like, what if we took that magic and brought it into people's own? And it was a conversation we had in 22 and meeting of the minds and coming together behind this one central mission of like, how do you deliver the purest, the most elevated, the most premium version of this beautiful cuisine? It's the fourth largest cuisine in the world with no hero, modern day premium brand. And through that conversation we said, why don't we do that together? And what better brand than Gymkhana to be the flag bearer of that mission? So we got together, put thesis together.

06:56
Gulrez Arora
So my time at Mars and everything I learned around category creation, around expanding the pie and evolving trends were all kind of in back of my mind. Combine that with the fact that I always wanted to build, combine that with the fact that this serendipitous connection happened and it all just came together and unlocked that. We got to go after this, like this is the time, this is the window. So, yeah.

07:21
Daniel Scharff
And it seems like you are well on your way to building that dream that you have. So congratulations on that, really.

07:26
Gulrez Arora
Thank you, buddy. Thank you.

07:27
Daniel Scharff
And I just have to ask. So you were running the accelerator program within Mars as a whole, which is a super cool thing. We see this thing with big CPGs though, they like will get excited about innovation, maybe build some kind of an accelerator, and then a couple years later they might shut it down and they like want the innovation, but it's hard for them to actually like invest in it, especially when times get tough. So you kind of have this accordion thing going on at a lot of big CPG companies around accelerators.

07:53
Daniel Scharff
But my question is actually now that you are well on your way to building this thing and you have launched at Whole Foods and Sprouts and done this on the inside, not top down, running an accelerator, looking at very cool companies, but actually building it yourself, what do you think you actually could have done different or better? Or like, what could a corporate accelerator do better, knowing what you know now about really what it's like to build such a hot brand?

08:21
Gulrez Arora
I'd say, firstly, I'd say it's tough, right? Trying to manufacture a founder mentality, a founder zeal and a founder's passion within a corporation is very tough, right? Like I think there are models where you could look at, and we started looking at that, but we didn't really land it. But was you take what a big CPG has, which is probably phenomenal, ip, great procurement, supply chain networks, and then maybe even some great ideas, but then let outside founders run that completely separate from the mothership. Because again, you think about Moz, the size of Moz or any of these big companies, even a hundred million dollar business is a rounding error, right? So they're not going to put their sales team and their general managers and their presidents to be like, prioritize this net new.

09:09
Gulrez Arora
Because you know what, like when they launch a Brownie M and m that's worth $400 million, right? A variant could do. That's the innovation that could unlock a huge amount of wealth where a startup is generally not the biggest focus for that core market. So I think what I'd say, what I do differently is it's very hard to manufacture what a founder goes through every day. And there's no amount of corporate salary that can make you think like that. And that is the truth, I mean, I look at how I operate now and just the way these problems are like so deeply personal to what I do, like it's just very different. Right. So I'd say what I do different is I do think there is a model.

09:49
Gulrez Arora
I do think there is a model on bringing some phenomenal IP that a lot of big companies are sitting on that they just don't have the bandwidth to bring to market or don't have the capability set. But how do you combine the big. With this founder's mentality and this founder passion that unlocks something that could be of meaningful scale? I wasn't able to do that. And which is why I was like, you know what? I think it is time for me to do something on my own. And listen, I had nothing but an unbelievable relationship with Mars still to this day and everything I know, to a lot of fundamentals, I owe it to that education for 10 years, but it was just the right time to move on.

10:26
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I really appreciate that perspective, having been on the inside there and then seen it from the outside, you know. Yeah. But especially the rounding error thing is so true because I remember when I was there I was in a revenue growth management role, which means looking at all of the promotions and pricing that the company does on a global level. And I remember doing the analytics at one huge account on promotions and finding this honestly, kind of low hanging fruit of we shouldn't do these particular promotions, they're not working as well as these other ones. And it was very clear that it would save us making, I can't remember, but something like 20 million bucks with no impact on revenue. And I remember delivering that. I was very proud of myself. Probably patted myself on the back and.

11:11
Daniel Scharff
And they're probably like, great, thanks. Okay, see ya. Yeah, and it's so much money though. And if I now think about, okay, my next job when I was at just Egg, I might have done some analysis like that and saved us 2,000 bucks. And everybody like throws their hands up and celebrates.

11:27
Gulrez Arora
You're the hero.

11:28
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, it like really makes a huge difference at that point. And so yeah, just the scale of the business is so hard to wrap your head around. And like, what is going to matter to people in the core business? So that's a really cool perspective. And by the way, I would love for people to get the treat of just getting to know you a little bit and how you got to this point of being able to launch this brand, which I think everybody watching is like, wow, that just launched and became a Massive success immediately. So one more background question on you.

11:55
Gulrez Arora
Sure, buddy.

11:56
Daniel Scharff
You and I also have something in common, which is, I think why we became fast friends when were at Mars, which is we both came from Deloitte before that.

12:03
Gulrez Arora
Yes, we did.

12:05
Daniel Scharff
And so we both had that consulting background, which the same way as you look at Mars and so do I. Just gave me so many foundational skills that I use constantly. Even it was three years of my life, a very intense three years. But I use it every single day in every single meeting. I wonder for you, what do you look back on from those days that prepared you for your time at Mars and now for your time scaling Gymkhana?

12:30
Gulrez Arora
I think for me, the biggest thing I took from consulting honestly was two things, actually. I think work ethic, early days. It really teaches you what real grind is, right? Like, it's probably what investment banking does to a certain degree as well. I think you get the grind game. You know what real grind is like, so you're prepared. So then everything else is relative after that. And then I think the second is clarity of communication. And I think that is how you present when you're in buyer meetings and landing key messages, whatever, if you're presenting even a slide or just conversationally summarizing stuff. Right. Is the clarity of communication relative to your audience group. And I think consulting gives you a masterclass on that when you are there. And I think those for me have been probably like you.

13:14
Gulrez Arora
I that was my first job out of college undergrad in strategy consulting. And it gives you the ground game, building blocks. And then Mars was the layer of consumer knowledge. And then I feel like I'm a better founder in my late 30s than I would have been in my 20s. I would have been all over the shop for sure.

13:32
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, yeah, same for me. Yeah, definitely.

13:34
Gulrez Arora
I don't know if you feel the same. I just feel like I personally needed that basics to have the confidence to be like, I think I can take a shot at this now. You know what I mean?

13:43
Daniel Scharff
I love it. I really agree with everything you're saying. That resonates a ton with me and that is a lot of what I got out of it too. Okay, tell me a little bit more about Gymkhana. I have never had the privilege of getting to eat there, but I know it is a storied restaurant. Can you talk more about the history of the restaurant and what it means to bring that brand into retail?

14:01
Gulrez Arora
Yeah, for sure. So Gymkhana started in London in 2013, pretty much within nine months, got its First Michelin star was like an instant hit in the London culinary scene. Was probably one of the first like wave of like these really premium Indian dining experiences. And then I think it's one of those iconic places that is both super culinary led but also has an amazing cultural angle. Like so Taylor Swift was there last month and Selena Gomez is there. So the Beckhams are regulars. Right. So this is a restaurant that obviously then went on to get its second star. It's a two mission star restaurant but it's equally has a very strong handle on culture but not manufactured. Right. This is just pure love for that cuisine, pure love for the brand.

14:49
Gulrez Arora
And over time it's kind of built this reputation as one of the most iconic Indian restaurants. Right. And it's open now in Vegas at the Aria, in other locations in America. So when I step back, I look at the brand, it is synonymous with what Nobu is to Japanese cuisine or potentially what Carbone is to Italian is gymkhana to Indian. And obviously to take that sort of an heritage brand into retail is not a job that on day one was like, oh le me. It's going to be just easy. We'll just bottle up something that's not the case. Like we have been very methodical, thoughtful in what the range is going to be, how long it took us to develop it. My partners and I had an agreement that we're never going to launch.

15:35
Gulrez Arora
We were not going to put this business into the market till we are very proud of what we put in the jar. And I think even though the idea and we really signed off things in 22 to come and do this partnership together, we didn't launch anything for about a year because it took us that much longer to be like what we have now is liquid gold in a jar and we are ready. It's go time. So that finesse, that ethos, that insane like obsession that I see my partners have on the restaurant side. By the way, Dan, the restaurant group is just not Indian. Right. Like they have different verticals. So if you go to London now, the best Middle Eastern or Persian restaurant is Baron Jack, which is part of the group.

16:16
Gulrez Arora
If you want to have the best Thai food, it's part of the group. If you want to have the best Spanish food, Sabor Lagado, they're both Michelin star restaurants. They have a 18 seater modern European, two Michelin star restaurant called Kitchen Table. Right. So what my partners have done is an unbelievable job on creating this powerhouse restaurant group that really obsesses over the details obsesses over the culinary heritage. And obviously, when we came into this partnership, the onus was on me to make sure we don't put anything that compromises that mission. And that's the reason, honestly, why we have the momentum, why we have is because once the people try the product, we have some of the strongest repeat in the category wherever we launch. And you try it. This is now becoming part of your weekly meals in uk.

17:04
Gulrez Arora
Indian food is very much part of the diaspora and how people eat that. People are eating Indian once a week. Either they're eating out, they're ordering takeaway, they're cooking. We have now become that weekly meal for them very synonymous with what, like a taco Tuesdays in America, you have the Friday curry night with the family in the uk, and a lot of that is now becoming a gymkhana night at home. So. And all of that is this extreme obsession on product and everything that we do so in terms of even new products that we launch. So that's a bit of a history on a storied restaurant expanding globally, taking that mission into people's home, and with being completely uncompromising on making sure the product delivers.

17:44
Daniel Scharff
Speaking of the product delivering, can you tell me a little bit about actually formulating it? I'm sure that was quite an involved process to get it to the quality that you are really proud of. What was it like? Where did you go to do it? What was the tasting and feedback loop like? Give us the deets.

18:01
Gulrez Arora
I tell people that I probably have the greatest R and D team of all time off several chefs that have in the Indian game of chefs that are top of their craft, right? Like, these are some of the best Indian chefs in the world. They really understand flavor. And taking that and then translating into a shelf, stable product is the journey that took us a while. We have launched a range that we kept the product and the recipes very pure to the restaurant experience. Now, obviously, you know, the restaurant is cooking there on site, it's garnishing and that stuff you do at home. But the core of the base sauce is exactly the same to the point where we still work with the same custom spice supplier that supplies the restaurant.

18:43
Gulrez Arora
And now we have really scaled into providing us the custom blends that we use. We're using the same tomatoes that we use to make the base sauce that we use in the restaurant. So the supply chain has been. We went out, we tried to do something that was more ready for like a normal making a sauce, and we soon realized it's not working. So went back and just really went back to the basics and actually scaled what the current infrastructure is into a CPG ready infrastructure, not for everything, but for most of the ingredients. And that really was the journey that took us a while, that back and forth and saying, not good enough yet. And then really kind of building that. And actually Now, Daniel, about 40 to 50% of products that we sell, we make it ourselves.

19:28
Gulrez Arora
The rest 50% are co pack. So we have this hybrid model also because we couldn't find anybody to make it to our spec. So when you're tasting Gymkhana's famous butter masala sauce, that's actually made by our chefs, it's the same chef that was in the gymkhana kitchen for 10 years. And now obviously we have a production facility and we're doing millions of units out of that. So we've scaled that operation. But the obsession on product has been so high that we actually had to put up an entire infrastructure to make sure that we are cooking the sauce like a restaurant does. It's multi layered. We cook the base, we cook the main, we cook the finisher. There's literally no shortcuts.

20:07
Gulrez Arora
I mean, I know a lot of founders are proud about their product, which you have to be when I say this is the restaurant level, this is actually the restaurant sauce. And probably my biggest hurdle or my biggest area where I need to really build is our supply network, especially as we are now in US and what does that mean as we launch into US retail? But yeah, so that kind of gives you a bit of what it takes to put what we put in the jar.

20:32
Daniel Scharff
And can you tell us just what is the product line? Can you tell us all the stuff that you guys have out there?

20:36
Gulrez Arora
Yeah. So we started with a range of cooking sauces, which in America you call simmer sauces, which is essentially you just add your protein to the sauce, you saute it, you let it simmer, it's ready anywhere from I say if you're using like a prawn in Argoan curry, It'll take you 15 minutes to get that on a table to a butter chicken might take 25 minutes or so. So whatever time it takes to cook the chicken, essentially. So we started with simmer sauces, marinades, which is. If you go to Gymkhana today, a big part of the Gymkhana menu is kebabs and tikkas, which is all the meats and proteins, and lamb chops and chicken tikkas and salmon and shrimps. And it's probably one of the most loved parts of the gymkhana experience.

21:22
Gulrez Arora
And we took like, what makes the meats incredible is the marinades, which is, by the way, a complete new part of like the Indian set. So if you look at Whole Foods Indian set or sprouts, there's never been an Indian marinade, or at least that I'm aware of. And this brings that extra level of depth into your barbecues, your grilling. And then we have chutneys. We don't have them in the us we have them in uk, which are essentially dips, dipping products you can dip anything in, or they're like a compliment to your main dish. And then most recently actually in the uk, which we are very excited about, launched a range of ready to cook, which is pre marinated proteins that are ready, they're pre marinated, have a sachet of chutney and it's like a centerpiece.

22:07
Gulrez Arora
It's like a spatchcock, like a whole bird marinated. You just come and put it in the oven and you get this insane dish that is full of flavor. We have chicken tikka thighs. We have salmon with our green marinade, herby fresh, and that's very exciting. So we have an ambient range. We've gotten into chilled, which is we sit in the meat section, which you can imagine is a whole different part of the store, different buyer, different supply chain network, and something that I think maybe at some point we bring to America. And in America, we've launched with our marinades and our simmer sauces for now.

22:38
Daniel Scharff
That sounds amazing. I love the sound of that pre marinated meat dish. Like even I could make that. I was just imagining myself in One of those Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams scenarios where he asked to make a whole meal and he can't cook anything, so he orders in and pretends that he made it. I'm like, oh, I could get away with pretending. Like I could make this really beautiful Indian meal just with this pre marinated, huge meat dish.

23:02
Gulrez Arora
That's right.

23:02
Daniel Scharff
Let's go. Let's get it here.

23:04
Gulrez Arora
Let's get it. Let's get it. Yeah, it's that simple. Just to add like. So the flavors we have chosen, or at least where we started were on the sauces are inspired by what we have on the curry menu. So quintessential butter masala. We have a goan curry, which is a coconut milk based simmer sauce. We have vindaloo, which is a bit more spice forward. We have tikka masala, which is the most well known dish in the world probably for Indian food. So we've kept things basic in the sense a this is what some of these dishes are on the restaurant menu. But also people buy or people know we just do it ten times better than anything else in the market. So for me, there's already a lot of education, like why Indian food? Why gymkhana?

23:50
Gulrez Arora
If I start getting cute with my flavors and things that are very new for an average consumer, you've completely lost them. So you've got to hit him. Butter masala is like a marinara, right. Of Italian. So you gotta go where the consumer is.

24:04
Daniel Scharff
I love it. It is complex business that you're growing here. You've got the uk, you've got the us You've got multiple temperature classes, different categories of products. But it seems like you guys are managing it really well. One question that I have for you is about the source of volume. I wonder, like, where are the consumers who are buying gymkhana coming from in the store? I'm sure there is some percentage that will see you as a better version or maybe a more premium version of some of the legacy Indian sauce brands they were buying or other products that were already on the market. But I also have a suspicion that a lot of people will just learn about your brand and the quality of it and it would be highly incremental, like yeah, actually.

24:47
Daniel Scharff
And just get them excited about cooking a meal that would fit into where I don't even know what that would take the place of, but just almost be totally net new for the category. What are you seeing?

24:58
Gulrez Arora
Yeah. So let me answer it in two ways. So firstly, everywhere we have grown, we have completely a. We have grown the category and more than majority of that is incremental. So think of it. In uk, the brands that were before we arrived were more like Rao's or Carbone. What they did to Italian sauce is what Gymkhana is doing in the uk. So imagine the days of Ragu and Prego in America and Rao's comes and creates a whole premium tier, bringing a whole new consumer that likes natural ingredients and premium products.

25:29
Daniel Scharff
You just invalidated my whole childhood. But okay, yeah. So eating Prego out of the jar, Kraft Parmesan.

25:37
Gulrez Arora
What Mars taught me is there's a role for every brand in the market. So we just got to know our roles and play those. Right? So for us it's been that in the UK. So in the UK, the Indian category, the 90% of the category growth is driven by Gymkhana and 70% of that growth is incremental. These are shoppers that never shop the set. They were never in center store, they never bought another jar or even just like an Indian sauce product. They might or might not have been fans of the cuisine. Most likely they were, but they were ordering either cooking from scratch ordering takeaway. In us, we're seeing the same thing repeat like the latest Nielsen cut. In I think three months, we became the number one Indian sauce brand from just when we launched three months ago.

26:21
Gulrez Arora
We grew that category and pretty much other brands also grew. But our share of that growth was over 70%. We don't have the data from old foods to validate, but I'm pretty sure that all that incremental growth is incremental to the category. And that's the same results were seeing in our first month of sprouts launch. So that's question one. We are a hugely incremental brand. Whenever we show up, wherever we show up, and for a few reasons. One is obviously the brand carries the cachet.

26:53
Gulrez Arora
If you're in the foodie kind of community and if you love the cuisine, you might be South Asian or you might just love the cuisine and the diaspora and you live the restaurant food culture, there's a high chance you've heard of gymkhana and if you travel and that consumer base is usually incremental and coming to the set and buying it. And we see that even online, right? Like we started, we launched a D2C business and it's completely taken off. Majority of these people have either heard of gymkhana or their friend has been and they've seen it on socials. They were never buying Indian sauces before. And that's what's exciting to me. Right? And that's one of the things going back to Amar's days, Dan, I remember it's like everybody eats when the pie gets bigger, right?

27:33
Gulrez Arora
So our role is to grow the pies, to grow the categories, to extend that product trial and usage occasion and become Indian food as part of the repertoire of your dining options. That never used to be the case. So I'm very excited by that data, which is what gets us the right listings. But we then compound that with the right activation. For us, a lot of time our team spends is on getting out of center store. Not a lot of people go in that aisle. Like is how do we work with retailers to set up the right joint plans to make sure we are doing shippers next to meat, fish and poultry, that we are doing Every end cap we get, we take because that's what drives it on. Retailer.com, we are running deals with chicken thighs because that's how you consume the product.

28:16
Gulrez Arora
So a lot of the investment in market has been around the point of purchase. We have an insane focus on the restaurant and the overarching PR of the brand is in my top of funnel. Majority of my budget is winning the point of purchase. And we make sure we create many of these point of purchases throughout the year. And in uk, our team has done an unbelievable job at coming out of the aisle every time we can driving trial the right promo mechanic, you understand? And that's the fundamental game of cpg, right? So you pair that with a brand that continues to rise and drive awareness and become loved by people and followed by people, you get this beautiful flywheel that starts spinning. And now in uk, the CPG has higher awareness than the restaurant.

29:03
Gulrez Arora
So a lot of people in the UK are now discovering the brand on the shelves and them being like, oh, wow, the sauce is this good. I gotta go check out the restaurant. So the flywheel is now going the other way, which is the beauty when you get it right. I mean, us, we are early days, we are four months in, but we are seeing some incredible data come out of retail and both D2C, which gets me really excited about the possibility not only just of our brand, but the cuisine and the broader diaspora.

29:28
Daniel Scharff
It's pretty exciting and inspiring, I think, what you're talking about, because the stats that you're giving around the incrementality of the brand, it seems to me like you have the very real potential to not just be incremental for the category, but actually just to grow people's experience with and love for Indian cuisine in general, like in the country, just by them being introduced to this, like such a high quality brand that gets them excited to maybe try to cook Indian food at home. I mean, just take somebody like me. I'm not a good cook. I can make something super basic, but I feel like seeing your product on the shelf, I'd be like, oh, no, I could make something actually pretty cool at home. This looks pretty easy to do. Let me take my first shot at actually making Indian food at home.

30:14
Daniel Scharff
And it probably would be delicious with how easy you make it. I mean, that must be pretty exciting for you to not just be able to build this very beautiful global Indian brand, but then also just get more people into cooking Indian food at home.

30:29
Gulrez Arora
Yeah, a hundred percent, Matt. To me, it's like, we're not a fad, we're not a trend. This is not here now, gone tomorrow. It's a 5,000-year-old heritage cuisine that has been around for 5,000 years, will probably be here for 5,000 years. It's just a matter of, I think Americans are starting to discover it and they're starting to love it. You see what's happening in the restaurant scene and this is where I think it's super exciting when my partners and I step back and we're like, man, this could be one of the many amazing brands. There's some phenomenal restaurant brands and retail brands that have been around before we showed up to do the heavy lifting. The moment is happening now and what a privilege to drive that and drive the accelerant on that with both at home and the restaurant experience.

31:13
Daniel Scharff
That's exciting. And I imagine it is a different kind of like in the UK with just the little bit that I know about it seems like it would be maybe more about getting people just a better option. I just feel like curry is so firmly implanted in everybody's food choices in the uk. It's just so common. Like you were saying about the Friday curry. I mean, it's such a common food choice for everybody, I feel like more so than in the US So it just isn't maybe like you just wouldn't see the share of it being as high as something like Italian food, a.

31:46
Gulrez Arora
Hundred percent or Mexican here.

31:47
Daniel Scharff
Right, right. So it's just really exciting to me that I think you guys have the very real potential to contribute to getting it on that level. So that is awesome. I want to just talk a little bit about the mechanics of launching in the U.S. i wonder, could you tell me about the Whole Foods launch for example, and how has that gone? And I'd love to know what is that experience like for you after having so much UK experience getting on thousands of doors there.

32:12
Gulrez Arora
Yeah. So uk it's funny like we launched with Whole Foods in UK as our first launch partner. Now obviously the footprint, it's a smaller London based footprint, but from day one I was very intentional that we need to completely over invest and get this brand to be seen at Whole Foods and the buying team to love what we are doing. And we came in, Dan, I kid you not. Basically we grew that category 900% and were 90% of the category. And not only that, we grew the entire global set by like 50, 60%. It was some wild numbers because we came in hot and heavy. And I knew that my goal was always I knew we're Going to go to America. And I knew Whole Foods is an incredible gateway partner till this date for emerging brands. Now obviously things have gotten much more.

33:00
Gulrez Arora
There's way more choices to build brands with TikTok and Amazon and D2C. But like to me, Whole Foods was exactly the right hitting zone for us as brand. That over investment and how we've kind of grown, not only paid in uk, the buying team there introduced us to the buying team in US and that got the conversation started. We could have launched maybe a year earlier, but I was not ready because you know, it's hard to build one business, let alone two emerging businesses. So I was like, let me get UK a little bit more stabilized. Get the right team, get the right run rate, get the right like cash utilization. Because you know, obviously you cannot have two markets that need capital and cash at the same time. So then finance muscles kick in to be like, what's the right phasing?

33:44
Gulrez Arora
And we then launched in February this year. But now we had a playbook. We knew what it takes to build a center store category that is premium and really explode that. We brought that playbook to us Whole Foods and showed them how we activate it next to meat, fish and poultry, how we have these beautiful gymkhana trays on every butcher counter in UK, one of UK retail stores. It's like 365 days, right? Like it's there, it's permanent placement. And we showed the impact and incrementality data, basket size, upgrade data, all of that kind of led us to a very strong launch plan and a continued plan for this year. Sprouts again.

34:24
Gulrez Arora
Conversation started a year and a half ago and again the same logic and same kind of rational, same playbook, same data story really helped us land, not only land the doors, but really I think for me is the game for us is not getting on the shelf, is getting off the shelf. And that is where you need a very strong activation plan to make sure, especially in a category that is unknown, a brand that's unknown to your point, like you would have never thought of Indian food. But listen, if I come out of the aisle three, four times a year and you're seeing me near your meat fridge as a marinade option, by the fourth or fifth time you will pick it up, right?

35:00
Gulrez Arora
And now I know now I need to make sure the product is excellent and easy, that once you try it, you're going to come back by it. So that's been the game, right? That's been the game for us. We've also hired Incredible operators. I have a really strong GM or like a. What would you call like a UK CEO essentially to run that business. He built Oatley's business there before that. Bear Snacks understands market dynamic, understand retailers. We've just hired somebody in America that we're going to be announcing very soon and she comes from a great background of building many brands. So we're building the team and the infrastructure of real operators that understand how to play this game.

35:39
Daniel Scharff
Okay, makes a lot of sense. Just as we're kind of wrapping up here, one thing I definitely want to ask you about is the funding. I know you guys raised a Series A, obviously to support a lot of this growth that you're doing of 8.5 million with Kavu, which obviously is very famous and known to everybody for such hits as Poppy. Can you just talk a little bit about what that relationship is like and how the partnership has worked?

36:06
Gulrez Arora
Yeah, it's been great. So they were my first. So when we've raised a $3 million seed round, were basically almost pre revenue at this point or just had launched a very small soft launch online in the UK only. But kudos to the CAVU team. I think big kudos to Jared who's on my board with Rohan. And I mean, Jared saw the opportunity on day one and it was amazing, right? Like you look at Kahu and you'd be like, oh, it must be Rohan who's fought the opportunity. But it was actually Jared who was like, no, this is a thesis and a white space that is going to become a major part on a global scale. This is truly a global brand and there's no better brand position than Jim Khanna to really come and kind of seize that opportunity.

36:51
Gulrez Arora
And they were our first big capital partners. We also have other amazing investors and advisors to the business. And then they obviously re upped their interest and intent in series A. And they are incredible brand builders. They understand not just building brands, they understand building categories. And when you look at what we need to do is create a category. And we have really good and exciting board meetings where we discuss how do you crack American market and what will it mean to scale here? What's the right product proposition? What's the brand proposition? How do we win in America with an everyday American consumer and how they eat versus uk? The job to be done in uk, Dan, was we needed to answer one question, which is why Gymkhana? Right? When you come to us, you have to answer, why Indian? Why Gymkhana?

37:39
Gulrez Arora
And every time you have a new question that requires A lot of dollars and time and awareness to help answer. Right and trial. So UK has been very much about why gymkhana? Why should I buy gymkhana? But at least people know Indian food in America. We're going to be answering these two questions. So, yeah, they've been great partners. They've been supporters from when this was an idea on a page, pretty much. And we're in a very exciting phase right now and let's see where it goes.

38:05
Daniel Scharff
All right. I love it. Gulrez. Thank you so much. What a treat it's been to catch up for sure, buddy, and just get to hear everything that you guys have been up to. It just sounds like you are on an absolute rocket ship and one that we'll all be rooting for. So I'll look forward to circling back with you and hearing about all the impending growth. Just to conclude here, any good ways for people to follow along the journey and support Gymkhana?

38:28
Gulrez Arora
Sure. We are available in Whole Foods nationwide, Sprouts nationwide, Fresh Direct in New York on our website. Gymkhana Fine Foods will be launching very soon on Amazon and a lot more retailers. So over the next three to four months, we'll be announcing some really exciting retailer launches. And yeah, I can't wait for you all to try the product.

38:47
Daniel Scharff
That is perfect. And after we finish our recording here today, I'm heading over to FreshDirect's headquarters, so I will have a look around and I'm sure it's sitting in their fridges as well.

38:57
Gulrez Arora
I love it.

38:58
Daniel Scharff
So thanks again, my friend. This has been just such an awesome episode. Really excited to see all the good stuff ahead for all of you.

39:04
Gulrez Arora
Thank you, buddy. You're a legend and I can't believe the value that you are adding from our Mars Ace to seeing you as the greatest unifier of this incredible community map. And every time I go to Expo or your footprint just keeps expanding. Should be a Dan Expo West. It's amazing, man. I'm proud of you.

39:22
Daniel Scharff
Yep. Thank you. Yeah, we are doubling our section actually at Expo next year, so.

39:27
Gulrez Arora
Love it. Love it, buddy.

39:28
Daniel Scharff
Maybe the whole floor someday. We'll see. We love it. Let's go.

39:31
Gulrez Arora
Let's get it.

39:31
Daniel Scharff
All right. Thank you. Bye, everyone.

39:33
Gulrez Arora
All right, buddy. Take care, buddy.

39:37
Daniel Scharff
Well, my friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the startup CPG podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. As you may know, we're not just a podcast. We're a community of brands and experts. And you should join you can sign up @startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community. You're going to hear about amazing events near you, all of our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I will see you there or on our next episode. Bye Bye.