Prashant Parameswaran, Managing Director at Tata Consumer Soulfull Private Ltd
Prashant Parameswaran, a young Kochi entrepreneur, is the Managing Director and CEO of Tata Consumer Soulfull Pvt Ltd, a company on a mission to bring back India’s ancient grains to the global market.
Podcast
Overview
The Food Products Business
It is highly competitive around the globe. With numerous startups coming up every day to compete with the long-standing brands in the industry, it becomes paramount to come up with a strong point of differentiation to strive.
Food is no longer associated with just taste, hunger, or health.
It has to be a combination of all, which is the biggest challenge. When it comes to healthy food, we often notice the high prices that stand as a challenge in business success. In order to serve the customer’s soul, brands need to have a strong value system and story that resonates with the customer, who then believes in the brand and contributes to its growth.
Today, we have Prashant Parameswaran, a young food entrepreneur with an agricultural background who has successfully established a brand that brings India’s ancient grains to the forefront without compromising on taste, health, or customer’s pockets.
About Prashant Parameswaran
Prashant Parameswaran, a young Kochi entrepreneur, is the Managing Director and CEO of Tata Consumer Soulfull Pvt Ltd, a company on a mission to bring back India’s ancient grains to the global market. Prashant hails from an agricultural background, and while studying and working in the US, he got this idea of bringing back the millets as he studied the acceptance of quinoa in the US. We talk more about it in our podcast.
DISCUSSION
Prashant talks about his agricultural background along with his father’s distribution business. He shares that it had a long-lasting impact on him and created his love for the concept of creating a meaningful brand. He calls his journey a series of waves that led him to the island of entrepreneurship.
He says, “Every brand is like a living being. Successful brands are immortal human beings.”
Prashant recalls his journey of joining his family business, moving to Chandigarh and working on the potato chips business, moving to California, and learning about diaspora which brought in the idea of Soulfull.
Birth of Soulfull
Prashant explains that as social media was picking up from 2005 to 2009 and life started getting more complex, he noticed the conscious switch of people in the US resorting to healthier lifestyles. It also included a shift to using quinoa, and as he studied more about it, he realized the similarities to millets.
He says, “That is when I thought, can we make something around these and take these grains to the world? I was clear to not make it any other capitalistic brand. It needs to mean something and stand for something, needs to differentiate, and that’s where the soul came in. It’s the value system of the brand.”
Soulfull stands for saturating the soul and not just huger.
Prashant also talks about the importance of conviction for making any idea successful. He explains that his strong conviction for his idea made people believe in him despite some obvious backlashes.
Tata and Soulfull Marriage
Prashant shares the company’s vision statement that aims at making India’s ancient grain relevant for the 21st century. He said after initial investments, the challenge was distribution.
He feels the Tata marriage provides credibility from a brand perspective along with access from the market, ability, and science.
With Tata supporting Soulfull, the company is constantly working on building a strategy to bring out strong foods which are also ecosystem friendly.
More About Prashant
The business that started as a family business, bring in its strong value system, where everyone works on their respective domains and trust each other. He says, “We are the first ones to correct each other when something goes wrong.”
Prashant advises the young entrepreneurs who want to enter the food business, to look for a differentiation point and understand the market needs.
Profile
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