Vada -- the simple comfort food can be deliciously tricky to make unless you've spent hours mastering the technique of making the hole in the batter while slipping it into bubbling hot oil. But the trick gets trickier if it's the CEO of a food company trying to sell vada batter to the masses, promising them the perfectly round shaped vadas with its characteristic hole in the centre.
And that's when iD Fresh Food's CEO Musthafa PC though of using a Pepsi bottle while pouring the batter in oil. The experiment, although unsuccessful, paved the way for a jugaad idea which was a breakthrough and it was inspired by umbrellas.
"We took a Pepsi bottle, filled it with batter, made a hole on the cap, and tried to push the vada batter through it. But alas, we didn’t achieve the desired shape with that," Musthafa PC wrote on LinkedIn.
"Then my cousin Nazer came up with a new design inspired by an umbrella. A pipe shaped like an umbrella at the bottom. When the batter is squeezed through the pipe, it fills the umbrella and flows out from it, creating the perfect shape of a vada, and a cutter at the bottom to cut it soon after. We figured out that if the batter comes out in the shape of an umbrella, we were home. And that was it."
With that, Musthafa PC said, they had cracked a packaging design that continues to win several accolades.
The idea was lauded by several on social media.
"I tell everyone about ID Fresh's innovative packaging. Packaging can be a game-changing element of a product, thereby VERY important,' said personal branding professional Swati Kundra.
"This has always worked perfectly for me!!! I wonder why it is not easily available in all stores the way the idli dosa batter does! One of THE best innovations!!! I have even reused the pack. Fill it up with homemade vada batter and use the nozzle for making vadas!" commented Praneetha Koushik, a project manager at GALE.
But, there were also those who claimed to have tried out the product themselves and were not satisfied with the results.
"I am sorry this contraption didn't work... Tried it several times. The product was removed from the shelves in all the local market around Hyderabad. Needs drastic design improvement...," wrote retired major general G Shankar.
"Not even once has this worked for me," LinkedIn user Madhav Mahesh commented.
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