Beverage Startups
Liquii – Juice that Delivers Nutritious Nirvana
Do you enjoy tasty goods, but also care about what goes into your body? „Liquii“ has introduced a range of juices that are not only full of good nutrition, but also deliver an outstanding fruit tasting experience.Today I have the opportunity to interview the founder of this company – Shubham Khanna.
Liquii was founded in 2015. How did you come up with this idea? What is the meaning behind the name of your company?
Liquii was never a one day plan. The thought of Liquii first (Previously named as Tropical Island) came when me and my buddy were having juice from our college stall like everybody else does. My friend started getting cramps and he fell down on the ground. We rushed to the doctor, found that it was a case of severe food poisoning which had happened mainly due to bad pineapple juice. Moreover, there were 3 others who rushed to the doctor for the same reason.
After 1 week of rest when my friend recovered we discussed the idea, as this can happen to anyone as India has the largest street juice selling vendors across the world. On sharing this thought with my parents, it made me convinced that they are spending money on my engineering not to make me a Juicewala, so as we had no money we dropped the thought for some time.
After passing out from college I joined HCL as a Junior Engineer, at that particular point, Ed- Tech was the one that caught my attention, I started working on it with my close friend Pulkit, but things were not like what we thought it would be, so finally it went down.
The 2nd and final thought of Liquii came when I was working in Dell as a Hardware Engineer Consultant and coffee became the only refresher for me. Sipping 3-4 cups a day due to hectic schedules made my blood pressure increase which instead of giving me soothing effect used to make me look like a drug addict.
I started to search for replacements so found energy drinks like red bull and 
Gatorade but due to heavy caffeine kicks I knew it is bad for my health and this 5 minutes of instant boost will cost me a lot in later stage.
So finally I left my job in September 2015 and started off on a journey to make healthy replacements of the current offerings available and after doing research on over 150 companies we landed up founding Liquii.
We always wanted to work on Liquid Nutrition which should be mouth watering as well so we coined the name {The Licking Liquid } as Liquii.
Nowadays, it is quite difficult to avoid various issues while entering our rapidly increasing business environment. Did you face any difficulties in the beginning? If so, which challenges were the most troublesome?
According to me, the Foodtech in India is evolving at a steady state but it is not a booming time for Foodtech. Currently the priority of the first time buyers here is money but not the service. In US, the buyers not only look forward for good food but also for the quality service for which they even pay for.
So in India a good quality product, advertisements, comissions, taxes, packaging and delivery all needs to be covered in the retail price of the product which should not be more than $2 (which is still on the higher side) if you are going mass market , which becomes difficult for us.
Whereas in US, players like Evolution fresh and Suja juices sell it for $6-8. This $4-5 gap per bottle helps them in brand building, creating sustainable supply chain, good procurement mechanism and making a name in international market which a new Indian brand never seems to get.
People in India have been drinking juices from street vendors for less than half a dollar since a decade, so to make people spend double or triple the prices of what they are spending, making them understand the quality of raw material used, the processing methods difference and overall educating part is quite difficult.
Is the market for fresh juices competitive? What makes your product different from the other ones?
Yes, there is some good competition in the international and local market but have never thought of creating any kind of cleanse or detox plans which other players do because we always thought to add value and to bring out a product which can be consumed by a mass audience and also Liquii always aimed to add the ease of buying a soft drink and freshness of a food nectar and wanted to be a replacement for the packed juices.
Liquii is the only one in the class which use internally developed, made to order, freshly squashed platform other than cold pressing from our machines brought from Korea. Also Liquii is the only one which squashes only farm picked produce directly sourced from 7 partnered farms across India, which leads to creating our drinks pulpier. Not only that, Liquii’s journey starts from the fields where these fruits and veggies grow. Right from the type of soil to the harvesting and juicing state, everything is monitored with our internally developed matrices. Liquii promises a wholesome fruit eating experience in a bottle.
One of your core brand values is satisfaction. Which other assets are important to your company?
Yes our tagline “Live the Orgasm” says it all.
We believe satisfaction is the first thing every person looks for and if he gets that, he becomes your regular customer whether he/she gets satisfaction from the quality product or the quality service.
Other than that on the product side pulpiness, nutrition and taste are the 3 other basic matrices we work on without compromising with the hygiene conditions.
We believe that if a drink has 3 ingredients then all 3 of them should be accessible to your palate so that you can feel that you are actually munching a pulpy fruit along with tons of nutrition topping it all.
Your brand image seems to be quite entertaining and playful. Do you think that these features appeal to your target group? How would you describe your ideal customer?
We never wanted our brand to look like a health drink or just a juice. We have always wanted us to show a true youth lifestyle, so that even if the product is consumed by 70 years old granny she should feel the youthfulness other than the product taste.
Our main focus is still on the health enthusiasts, who are sick of drinking protein shakes and ill flavored drinks, we want to be a tasty alternative for them. Also we want the youth to drink us for our 100% fruit content, no preservative, no sugar, no added flavors other than the juice boxes owned by MNC’s who use Swanky Marketing Gimmick to let people consume pasteurized, flavored and sugary beverage, which instead of being healthy make people suffer with weight problems, hypertension, stress and many other modern diseases.
Taste and good nutrition is usually a hard combination to develop successfully. How do you find the perfect balance between mouthwatering tastes and perfectly healthy ingredients?
We always wanted to push the boundaries and make something that people will love not only because it’s healthy but also tongue smacking as well.
We started with the basics, the first one being the only pulpy player in the market, which gave us an upper hand.
The second one being using an internally developed freshly squashing method other than cold pressing where the microbial germination gets reduced and freshness of raw fruit gets intact.
The third one being working with farmers directly so as to maintain the quality of Raw Fruits and veggies from ground zero. All of this combined, gave us a gateway to play with fruits and vegetables which combined with our R&D department expertise gave a great result on not only being healthy but also delicious.
Your products consist of raw, unpasteurized, preservative free ingredients. How does this affect the beverage‘s expiration? How long does the drink remain fresh and suitable for drinking, once it is opened?
One of the places where we are still working on is to attain a good shelf life. Currently the shelf life of the product is 2-3 days but as we are a made to order platform we recommend our customers to drink it ASAP, to get the actual punch. Once opened it can sustain up to 24 hours in refrigerated conditions.
We are also looking forward on a different type of Aseptic packaging that can hold a good shelf life, along with great taste and nutrition.
You have many different flavors to choose from. Which ones are the most popular? Do you have a favorite one yourself? Do you plan on extending this variety of tastes?
Currently we have 2 different varieties of beverages:
a) 100% Nectar
b) Our functional beverage segment called Fruco Blends
Our 100% nectar is pulpy, punchier, and contains 100% fruits & our Fruco blends are meant for customers who require a drink Pre and Post workout, jog, or any physical exercise.
We use fruits churned with coconut water and added plant extracts which makes it a natural contender for sports drink which contains a lot of caffeine.
Out of my favorite 12, we have 4 top sellers our 100% watermelon Gush, 100% Alphonso Drupe, The Tangy Kicker and the Grapogranate.
We will soon be expanding on to the Organic Cow milk and Pea Protein Milk section churned with real fruits in the near future.
Where do you see Liquii 5 years from now? Are you planning on entering new markets and expanding your product line? Perhaps you would like to produce other types of beverages. If so, what kind of products are you interested in producing?
Liquii will be looking forward into sports and baby nutrition beverages on the product side. On the other side Liquii is developing a platform which will use the power of Data Analytics and AI to customize a 100% natural super food beverage according to your palate likings as well as your daily body stats. Also Liquii will be looking at in expanding to Tier1 and Tier2 cities along with increasing the shelf life of our existing products.
In next few years, Liquii will not only be beverage brand but will be a lifestyle brand with connected technologies.
Liquii wants to be a platform to simplify lives of people, be it on the hardware or the software side.
We look forward to be a combination of all the elements making us a productized service platform to make people healthy without digging holes in their pocket.
For more information visit Liquii’s Facebook page.
