In distress, gourmet popcorn brand Popcorn & Company found its white knights in Netflix and Amazon, and posted Rs 2.25 crore revenue
Vikas Suri has been in the business of heat for over two decades. In 2003, he started Kitchnrama, a venture to supply popcorn kernels, seasonings, oils and kitchen equipment to hospitality majors, cinema owners and institutional players. For Suri, who spent over a decade with a bunch of food and beverage (F&B) brands in India and the US before turning entrepreneur, FY20 was the best year for his B2B business: Rs2.76 crore in sales. “The B2B business was just heating up,” he says.
The revenue might look ridiculously low to be touted as ‘best’. Suri, though, doesn’t complain for two reasons. First, popcorn kitchen equipment is a cottage industry, with exceedingly low-entry barrier, and margins. Secondly, Popcorn & Company—his three-year-old gourmet popcorn brand which became bigger than Kitchnrama in FY19—had slipped from Rs2.19 crore to Rs1.27 crore in FY20. The business of equipment, Suri recalls, was best-placed to make most of the growing love for popcorns. With a combined revenue of over Rs4 crore from Kitchnrama and Popcorn & Company, Suri was quite puffed up about the prospects of a promising new fiscal.
Then came the pandemic. Theatres shut down; offices, malls and retail outlets closed; restaurants went out of business; and the food and beverage industry got battered. “I have never faced such heat in my life,” recalls Suri. For the seasoned F&B entrepreneur, the pandemic was almost a body blow. The B2B business came to a halt, and the future of B2C venture—Popcorn & Company—also looked uncertain. “I thought the pop had gone out of my life,” he says.
Nine months later, in December 2020, Suri’s business was sizzling. Thanks to Popcorn & Company. While Kitchnrama was still struggling to open its account, Popcorn & Company posted a revenue of over Rs2.25 crore. The staggering numbers churned in three quarters—April to December—were more than the sales of two fiscal years—FY18 and FY19—combined. Suri decodes the magic: Popcorn & Company went direct to the consumers who had found nirvana in a new form of entertainment: OTT binging on Netflix and Amazon.