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Epigamia, a brand renowned for premium Greek yogurt, has revolutionized the health industry in India. Available in 30 cities across the country, the brand has. With no trace of preservatives, artificial flavors, and adulterated ingredients, Epigamia products give their customers an opportunity to give in to their cravings without compromising their health goals.
Rohan Mirchandani, CEO, and Co-Founder, Epigamia is a management graduate of NYU. What made an NRI come to India and start a brand right from the ground up?
Already invested in ice cream parlors (Hokey Pokey) in Mumbai since 2009; in 2011 Mirchandani attended a few guest lectures calling the same one of the biggest pivotal points for Drums Food and his career, further pushing him to build a bigger consumer brand. Hence, 2015 marked the entry of Epigamia into the Indian market as a B2B brand to identify the consumer base. As a Greek yogurt brand, Epigamia was widely accepted across metro cities including Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.
Building a Category
The brand’s products fall under the larger category of dairy, however, it refrains from selling milk pushing for the conception of a category of its own. Along with the varied flavors of yogurt, beverages, cheese, and spreads, the brand also offers consumers an option to select between a dairy or non-dairy variant of the products.
“The core of Epigamia is its ingredients, flavors and fruit sourcing, mostly it is the taste, we furthermore struck a chord with Milkshakes that our consumer base accepted really well, including kids,” said Mirchandani.
Providing thrice the amount of protein in comparison to regular yogurt, the brand establishes the superiority of Greek yogurt further justifying its pricing. The product category and unique marketing technology of the brand can be credited for its involvement and acceptability across the consumer spectrum.
Furthermore, the company has rolled out ghee-based spreads, in association with Bollywood actor Deepika Padukone, who endorses the brand and is also involved in new product development. Padukone, through her investment venture KA Enterprises, picked up a stake in the company in 2019. Epigamia is also backed by French dairy major Danone’s venture arm Danone Manifesto Ventures.
New-Age Brand Strategy
Mirchandani noticed a growing demand for healthy snacking across the Indian market; consumers were looking for food items with the goal of healthy snacking. Moreover, Epigamia positioned itself around the age group of the late 20s and early 30s, using clear sharp communication as to what the brand stood for and the brand stands for.
Mirchandani stated, “We have very laser-focused brand architecture; we realized that if we really wanted to be an offline player, we had to have it in our space. We identified 100 to 150,000 stores that we want to be in, which we reached about 25% of today.”
“Our first priority was yogurt; we further ventured into plant-based yogurts, which then became a part of our premium range of Greek yogurt. Once yogurt became a mainstream product we went in for a distribution driver – regular fruit yogurt. This helped us establish our brand and move to the more entry-level accessible price points. The idea behind introducing the same was to get people to enter the category through reasonable price points and then upgrade their way into the larger segment of more premium price points,” he added.
Post-pandemic, the brand revamped itself, and started selling its products in both offline and online channels.
Overcoming Challenges
Epigamia started out by preparing small cups of yogurts manually and then scaling them up gradually. Thus, the major challenge for the brand was in the packaging and spoilage of the products.
“Once we started scaling up, it was a complete nightmare. We would have spoilage and a lot of issues, which was not about the sourcing but about the supply chain,” asserted Mirchandani.
The product is sensitive to heat, even a little bit of heat or shock can potentially ruin the product. Even with a 30-day shelf life, the product would expire in less than six days. Epigamia addressed each of these concerns by showing and demonstrating the ‘behind the scenes’ journey, building a consumer-first culture. Epigamia ensures that the perception of yogurt was beyond just a breakfast consumption product.
Future Plans
The company aims to expand to 35,000 offline stores in 50 cities in the next two years. Having established its presence in Tier-I cities, the brand now plans to enter Tier-II and III cities.
Globally, Epigamia plans to venture into the Middle-Eastern and South-Asian markets.
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