shastha food case study

Industry: Food & Beverage
Size: A growing enterprise

Shastha Foods triples their mainstream locations with their new brand Positioning.

Brand activation, digital transformation and omnichannel marketing for the fastest growing Asian Indian foods brand in the U.S. Building powerful online and offline channels for their “all-natural and gluten-free” products, the company is poised to revolutionize the breakfast industry.

Building powerful online and offline channels for their “all-natural” and “gluten-free” products, the company is poised to revolutionize the breakfast industry.

Client: Shastha Foods

Success By Numbers

65%

Increase in social selling year on year (based on conversions attributed to Facebook and Instagram traffic)

3

large retail grocery chains to carry Shastha Foods Gluten-free products

Business Value Realized

  1. Brand recognition and recall as the largest manufacturer of Indian Batters in USA
  2. Popularizing Indian Crepes (Dosa) to mainstream audience
  3. Social selling through Facebook, YouTube and Instagram
  4. Ecommerce contributes to 20% of the company revenue

About The Client

Shastha Foods has popularized Indian Breakfast Crepes called Dosas – a naturally fermented food that promotes probiotics and nutrition. Since 2003, they have sold a 160 million dosas across the U.S. and Canada. They are committed to bringing great quality products that benefit people, society and the planet.

Challenges

1. Only limited to Indians in USA
A traditional meal from South India, Dosa consumption was limited to mainly Indian households. Not commonly promoted, its benefits and usage were unknown to non-Indians.

2. Lack of brand messaging
The Company experienced organic growth in the first couple of years. With the addition of new products and entry into the mainstream markets, the lack of unified messaging and product design created a barrier to entering large retail stores.

3. Stress on marketing resources
A growing e-commerce portal and an increase in product portfolio put stress on the existing design and content production. B2C marketing required faster turnaround times, efficient social media execution and strong analytics to grow and track results.

Solution

1. Brand Repositioning
We’ve helped Shastha Foods become a category leader with their “gluten free” breakfast offerings. Narrating their brand story through social media content, user-led campaigns like “Home Chefs” and community outreach, we’ve helped dramatically increase mass adoption.

2. Opening new markets
An increase in brand recall among Indians and non-Indians has removed barriers to entering large-scale retailers. From pitch decks to preparing for open calls, we’ve worked with the client to market to large grocery retailers. This has opened a new revenue vertical for the client.

3. Design and marketing hub
With an offshore and onshore team, the client needed cost-efficiency and speed while maintaining the quality of work. Our global production model has a built-in 24-hour production cycle for their product designs and social media content generation.

Shastha Foods TRIPLED their Costco Locations using Influencer Marketing.

Features Leaveraged

  1. Hootsuite for Social Media campaigns
  2. Switchboard with Zoom for a Sunday morning webinar
  3. Email campaigns through Shopify

PDS has been instrumental in helping us growing from a start-up to a multi-million dollar food manufacturer today. Right from the first job in 2009 of redoing product packaging to overseeing all aspects of our company’s marketing – Social, E-commerce, Events and Design, Suchi and her team has worked as our marketing partners for the past decade. My team still continues to work closely with PDS.

Mani Krishnan
Founder & CEO, Shastha Foods