It all started when Anuj Rakyan was looking for a juice option and could not find one without any additives, concentrate, sugar, colour or preservatives. Not only that, all juices on shelf were pasteurized (boiled) impacting the nutritive value of the juices.
Cold-pressed was a technology that used no heat, no oxidation to extract the juice where the juices weren’t blended but pressed for more pulp. Blending also breaks down cell structure of the fruit and the presence of oxygen can lead to faster oxidation of the juice.
There was also a limitation in the choice of fruit juices with the usual orange, mango, apple flavour juice based drinks. He saw there was a gap for him as a consumer for fresh, no additives juices with interesting fruit and vegetable mixes for consumption.
Taking matters in his own hands, literally, he started making his own healthy, fresh juices in his mother’s kitchen which became the inception point of RAW Pressery. Anuj Rakyan shares with us his thoughts and success stories with Insights Success in the interview mentioned below.
Brief us about the Founder/CEO of the company and the major contribution of him/her towards the development of the company.
Anuj Rakyan, is the Founder and MD of RAW Pressery, India’s first and largest clean label brand. Growing up as an athlete, Anuj understood the importance of eating healthy and maintain an active lifestyle. His keen interest in health and fitness and his understanding of the space lead him to launch India’s honestly healthy “All Good. No Bad” brand. Anuj’s goal is to address the scarcity of honest & transparent products and build a brand that is genuine and authentic. He aims to plug this gap through an offering that keeps a check on health while delivering fresh and delicious products.
Tell us about the services you provide through your venture.
RAW Pressery started with home-delivering 8 different types of healthy juices & also the first ever Juice Cleanse in Mumbai with the help of dabbawalas. The brand now is available in over 16 cities (mainly Bangalore, Hyderabad, NCR, Mum, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Mangalore, Chennai) and more than 2000 points of sale. Our most recent All Good. No Bad offering is the dairy-free almond milk which comes in 4 variants namely, cacao, plain (unsweetened), mango & dates. We have also forayed into the Middle East with our first steps in the UAE and Qatar.
Please share some success stories, awards, and accolades that the company has received.
RAW Pressery has been much loved and recognized within food & beverage and the startup industry with many awards such as the Golden Spoon, 50 Emerging Startups to watch in India and even the Entrepreneur of the Year which was awarded to Anuj Rakyan. Our most recent one which we are extremely proud and honored to receive is the Best Vegan Drink award by Peta (2018).
How does the company intend to give back to the society?
As a brand we believe in trust and transparency and our brand philosophy of all good. No bad. Is extended from sourcing to production. We are a clean label brand and we believe in sustainable solutions. While we were always recycling our plastic waste at the factory we were asking ourselves the question of how we can make ourselves not just plastic neutral but also recycling positive. Many of our consumers are conscious to return their bottles which we then send further to our recycling partners. We wanted to educate consumers that proper waste management coupled with modern day innovations can prevent plastic from entering the seas unchecked. Also that there exists technology today that can convert this plastic into wearable apparel.
We use plastic bottles for our juices as they are cold-pressed, never pasteurized and undergo high water pressure processing (HPP) technology for preserving the juice. Plastic is the only element that can sustain the pressure, glass cannot withstand the high pressure. Any juice that’s in a tetrapak or a glass bottle is pasteurized in order to get shelf life and pasteurizing impacts the nutritional value of the juice. Our juices are never boiled or pasteurized to preserve nutrition value in the juices.
Glass is also heavier and requires more fuel energy to transport impacting the environment with higher carbon footprint. With this initiative, we are aiming for better waste management and how with the help of innovation and creativity we can give purpose to plastic. As we’re all aware, unmanaged plastic waste in our eco-system wreaks havoc on international biodiversity. With a growing eco-conscious community and global thought leaders now entering the conversation, there is hope to provide innovative solutions to waste management, and in turn, create a circular economy. Our primary goal is to mitigate the amount of plastic that’s getting dumped in our wastelands and oceans. Seven RAW Pressery bottles, make 1 RAW Cycled T-shirt. From the time we started, we have successfully collected 1.2 million bottles. Currently it’s a drop in the ocean but every little drop counts.
Share with us one latest development in agricultural technology that will play a major role in helping the Indian farmers and tackling the growing food demand.
We work very closely with our farmers and are constantly learning and gaining valuable insights from them to make our product better. With the help of technology, we are soon going to be able to showcase to our customers the entire supply chain right from where a particular ingredient was sourced, the soil condition, it’s ph level, at what temperature it was harvested and transported to the pressery, even details of the juicing process going right up to the point the bottle goes onto a retail shelf. With the help of technology, we are going to bring in more transparency and thereby further strengthen the trust within our customers.
Brief us about the future of the company or the goal it has set to mark its exceptionality in future.
RAW Pressery started with 8 super healthy cold pressed juices and now we have over 26 different juices including the country’s first-ever bottled sugarcane juice. The key factor is to innovate and provide customers convenience without compromise. The core philosophy of All Good. No Bad runs throughout the company and we will keep coming up with products that stand true to this promise. We recently launched Almond Milk which was is a dairy alternative for the lactose intolerant and vegan audience. Very soon we will launching new flavors and many such innovative products that help people lead fulfilling healthy lifestyles.
