Founded in 2019, the ice cream brand currently serves over a lakh customer every month
Bengaluru: The growing awareness about health and the consumer demanding healthy alternatives has pushed the food and beverage industry to adapt to newer ways of looking at consumption. Noto, entered this category to disrupt the frozen dessert space with healthy ice creams and is today reinventing the concept of healthy desserts, taking one step at a time to become a one-stop shop for smarter sweet cravings.
Getting the trend on-point
Noto entered the healthy ice cream space in 2019 when the founder, Varun Sheth was on a fitness journey and needed to cut down on desserts and sugar; something that he wasn’t willing to do. The available dessert options didn’t really live up to the taste expectation and most of them weren’t transparent about labels and ingredients. That’s when Sheth; who is also a chef by profession did extensive research and launched Noto. A brand where you could eat desserts guilt free and not have to compromise on taste and quality. Later joined in by Ashni Sheth, co-founder, of Noto, the brand has been holding innovation at the center of all its business plans to serve health-conscious
consumers.
As for its exclusive healthy ice cream range, each 125 ml tub has only 75-95 calories, 3 grams of fat, 75 percent less sugar, and higher protein than traditional ice creams. All options offered by the brand are under 100 calories as compared to normal ice cream, which contains between 140 and 200 calories.
Growing with power
When talking about the brand’s growth mantra, Varun says “product innovation is key, so is execution. Launching a very cool product has no meaning if people cannot get their hands on it. We’ve taken our time to scale to multiple cities so that we can build a strong foundation and sustain it. We also like to be transparent when it comes to what we use as ingredients.
There are no hidden elements, we don’t remove disclaimers and ingredients just to make the label look more appealing. What you see is what you get. As founders, we would only make a product that we ourselves consume and give to our families. We also have a 100% vegan dairy- free line that is completely sugar-free. Our mini bites of ice cream are also a crowd favourite at only 30 calories per serving!”
Taking the big leap
The story of growth is a cumulative effort of multiple activities that come together. And Ashni says, “To understand instant feedback about our newly launched products, we connect with the customer. This way we get a goldmine of insights from our loyal customers.
We post relatable content which brings about the stickiness which is the need of the hour. Strategic planning, maintaining a healthy inventory of all bestsellers clubbed with inventory forecasting. Teamed up with quick commerce to ensure that our products are delivered in the quickest time. Creating multiple hubs to ensure quick mobility of products are some of the ways in which we stay agile.”
The ice cream brand has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed round led by WEH ventures, along with Lead Angels earlier, and has celebrity investor John Abraham and his wife on board. Noto has sold over 1.5 lakh units of ice cream and claims to be serving around 50,000 customers annually.
Brownie points
- The brand has recently launched an Indian mithai range with zero sugar. Foraying into a completely new category has allowed them to witness a good response.
- Noto currently retails through Zomato, Swiggy, Instamart, Dunzo, and Zepto apart from its own website.
- The brand serves over a lakh customer every month. And promises same-day delivery for most products when purchased through its own website.
- Currently retailing across Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi, the brands looks to expand across geographies in India.
First appeared in The India D2C Yearbook 2022
