This woman entrepreneur is disrupting the snacks sector with a Samosa Party

The samosa is an all-weather snack. Many call it a cultural symbol – with a rich, hearty flavour in the North and a sweeter one in Gujarat to a milder, crunchier version in the South and the singhara in the east. This snack comes with a variety of fillings – from the ubiquitous potato to a vegetable mix and minced meat.

The Indian snack market is pegged at Rs 42 lakh crore, and 65 percent of this is completely unorganised. With Indians consuming 2.7 times snacks compared to 2.3 times meals – and this savoury their top favourite - it’s literally a samosa party out there.

That’s where brands like Samosa Party come into the picture, with a huge variety of samosas.

The snack startup began operations in Bengaluru in 2017, and now has 11 outlets in the city. It plans to enter Chennai and Hyderabad in the next few months, and Dubai, Asia, and select Western markets by 2021.

Founded by Diksha Pande and Amit Nanwani, Samosa Party offers snacks from its cloud kitchens in Bengaluru.

The crunch factor

After an exciting corporate stint with Yum Brands, and later with Chai Point and Cowrks where she saw how homegrown businesses had the ability to create value for everyone, Diksha decided to start up. She met her co-founder, Amit, found that he shared the same sentiments, and a startup was born.

“I would often discuss with friends and family, but never had the courage to start up. During my days at Yum Brands, I noticed how foreign cuisines had created such strong brands and impact in our lives; native food and snacks were limited to street-side establishments.

“I took inspiration from that trend and decided to work with an Indian food product and give it a global identity,” she recalls.

Diksha says that they want to make one of the most popular street snacks of India available to people at the click of a button in clean, tamper-proof packaging. 

“We offer 20 different varieties of savoury and sweet samosas, 100 percent preservative-free. Each filling is designed to evoke a strong sense of nostalgia. From smokey Amritsari Pindi Chana, zingy Kolkata Chilli Chicken, the unconventional Corn Cheese to spicy Jodhpuri Aloo Pyaz, we have ensured there is something for every palate from every corner of the country. 

"Samosa is a great snack to serve at parties and small gatherings and we also offer party packs of 50, which are freshly fried and delivered at the doorstep,” she says.

The startup also offers teas and desserts like gulab jamun. Orders can be placed on its website, and Swiggy and Zomato.

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An organised party

Samosa Party runs cloud kitchens in Bengaluru, but is also building a brand with the product (samosa) so that it can be present in each format, be it cloud, retail, frozen, or ready to eat. It is also using a unique production technology and is working to make the entire samosa-making process automated. 

As a techie, Amit oversees product, technology, and growth while Diksha primarily oversees operations, people, and customer experience at Samosa Party. 

Diksha admits there are many traditional businesses in this category and while they do a very authentic job, their scale and speed are limited because of lack of any corporate structure and the fact that it's a family-owned business.

“We believe one of the biggest Indian food brands to scale globally will be a street food brand because of its variety and democratic taste. For that, we have scaled Samosa Party to 11 locations in Bengaluru and will soon be expanding to other locations.

"We are a cloud-only brand, which gives us speed to scale and execute faster and penetrate deep in any geography,” Diksha says.

Samosa Party recently received an undisclosed amount of funds from Inflection Point Ventures. The company plans to use this funding to scale and open cloud kitchens across Bengaluru and other Tier I cities.

An eye on the pie

Having sold over 22 lakh samosas so far, Diksha shares the startup has grown 5x since the first year of operations.

“There are more than 20 lakh street food vendors in India and the street food opportunity is a $100 billion market. We have realised there is a huge demand-and-supply problem when it comes to samosas. India also exports samosas to 140+ countries so there’s a big opportunity globally as well,” she says.

The COVID-19 outbreak also has been a great learning for the company.

Order volumes went down for a few days when the lockdown started in March, but Diksha says they are currently at 100 percent of pre-COVID volumes.

“We have sold over five lakh samosas since lockdown and the numbers are improving everyday. Customers are craving clean and hygienic street food, and we fill that gap. Customer behaviour for our category of food has changed for the better. They would like to eat from hygienic, trustworthy brands, given rising health concerns in the world,” she says.

As a cloud kitchen business, Samosa Party’s goal for the future is to be present in every 3-km radius within a city. “We also plan to launch a ready-to-cook range soon,” Diksha says.