Raw Pressery, bets on cold-pressed fresh juices to build its fortune

Summer days for many of us mean daily consumption of juice. This juice is usually not the one you consume out of tetra packs, but the fresh mausambi juice made by neighbourhood juice-makers or sugarcane juice vendors. I wondered why organised juice-makers never put these two variants in a tetra pack.

Startup Raw Pressery is responsible for planting this thought in my mind, because even they offer cold-pressed juices that can be consumed on the move. However, unlike other beverages that simply target your taste buds, Raw Pressery products focus equally on health.

About the venture

Raw Pressery is a health food and beverage startup from Mumbai that aims to give people their daily dose of nutrients through healthy cold-pressed juices. Unlike single flavour juices available in tetra packs, Raw Pressery juices are a blend of ingredients to help you trim, glow, shield, build, run and flush. Each bottle of juice has been specially formulated to help achieve this.

Raw Pressery Founder Anuj Raykan has been a health connoisseur for a long time. His brief stint in the US introduced him to the concept of cold-pressed fresh juices, which is commonplace there. When he decided he wanted to do something of his own, cold-pressed juices presented a good opportunity. On his foray into the space, Raykan says, “When I was in college and working outside India, I clearly noticed the lack of health products in India. Only things made in your home kitchen was considered to be healthy. Many products that made claims of low fat, no preservative, no sugar, etc were not really telling the truth.”

Raykan is an Economics graduate from Duke University, and his last role before turning entrepreneur was VP-Sales at Nirav Modi Jewels. He credits his previous experience with helping him organise the infrastructure, team, financing and launch of Raw Pressery within six months of conceptualising it. Raw Pressery was launched in January this year, and has already sold over 85,000 bottles of juice to over 2,500 customers. Raykan claims they will break even within this year itself.

The backend 

The range provided by Raw Pressery can be divided into two broad variants – an everyday juice commitment package and a cleansing package. Raykan says the idea for these categories came from his personal interaction with friends and family, as well as a market survey they had undertaken with over 500 people to understand their need. “Personal experience, market survey, white reports from E&Y, talking to industry experts, meeting and interactions with actual shop managers helped give us a well-rounded perspective,” says Raykan. 

The packaged juices market in India is worth Rs 2,000 crores with players like Real from Dabur and Tropicana from PepsiCo. Startup Hector Beverages with its product PaperBoat is also vying for the same pie. However, packaged juices continue to be a big city phenomenon, even as cold-pressed fresh juices continue to thrive and grow alongside. “The Indian consumer is fully aware of what is fresh juice, because no other country in the world has as much fresh juice sold on the street as we do. We get nimbu paani, sugarcane, and carrot juice- everything on the road. Equally, you have a big segment of Indian consumers who make juice at home,” says Raykan.

Raw Pressery was mostly bootstrapped, and they’ve also had a small round of angel funding. The startup has imported production equipment from the US, while they are currently sharing floor space in the factory where the juice is produced. It has 22 members and another group of 25 people to help with product delivery. “There are close to 30 people on our payroll, and indirectly we manage 65 people,” says Raykan. 

Market for the product

Currently, Raw Pressery juices are available in Mumbai and Pune, and Delhi is next on the cards. Up to 70% of its customers are women in the age group of 20- 60, and the balance is men aged between 30-45 years. “People who drink us want to overcome their junk food eating habits; some are getting married and need good skin; some are going for vacation, etc,” says Raykan.

The juices are available in 250 ml bottles starting from Rs 150. Raykan says that the more you order, the more the cost benefits. Therefore, even the Raw Pressery website mostly offers packages spread over 3 or more days to help you achieve a certain health goal.

Juices ordered online are delivered fresh by 8:00 am in the morning at the customer’s door-step. In retail, Raw Pressery is available at high-end grocery stores in Mumbai, BigBasket.com, a couple of gyms, yoga centres, catering services and at some corporate canteens, as well. They run out of stock at all stores each day, and Raykan says they prefer to have it that way.“Our product is perishable, which is the biggest difference between our product and any other juices in the market. So, while we have 3-day shelf life, we need to sell out. Let’s say there are 50 customers who want to buy our juice. We would want to supply only 40 so that the other 10 keep coming back next day, rather than having any wastage. Holding inventory is not something that I want to do, and that is also a problem when you want to start scaling,” he explains.

As a startup, they don’t have a lot of marketing cost and mostly work through word-of-mouth and cult branding. They do many in-store promos and activities. Raykan says that they don’t have much costs on the supply side as they mostly purchase in bulk. Their strategy is to be in chain stores and understand the type of customer picking them up.

Future plans 

Raykan is quite happy with the traction Raw Pressery has built since launch, and plans to add more juices and cleanses to their range. He has plans to introduce products for children in the future, like smoothies, which would be both healthy and tasty. Healthy raw foods like soups and dips are also something he has on cards.

How can we take a three-day shelf life product and make it scalable is what we are looking at. Like we were the first cold-press juice company, we want to be the first company to make such juices last for 40-45 days; that’s an ambition. We want to procure an innovative technology to do this, while maintaining nutritional level, and not adding any preservatives. We can then scale to other cities and grow faster,” says Raykan.

Raw Pressery is also looking for its next round of funding, which Raykan says would be a more strategic round. “We are looking for alliances in distribution, marketing and production – so we want to get people who have some experience in this space,” he says.

Website: Raw Pressery