Coimbatore, Nov. 19
Vedapatti is nestled in the neighbourhood of the Chithirai Chavadi Channel, which carries the waters of the River Noyyal to the water bodies of Coimbatore. The visionary patriarch of the Annapoorna Hotel family, K. Damodaraswamy Naidu, established his residence inside a large farm in Vedapatti years ago.
Today, his grand-daughter Anjana Srinivasan runs her start-up, "FROOZE" from the Vedapatti farm. Trees, creepers, birds and squirrels welcome the visitors with shade, breeze, cackles and chirps. The huge cow stead is an added attraction and one has to commend the people behind its maintenance.
Anjana did her schooling from Stanes and took her Indian degree from PSG College of Arts and Science before finishing her MBA from Cardiff in the United Kingdom. She lives with her technocrat husband Harshavardhan at Sai Baba Colony and commutes every day for work to Vedapatti.
The bubbly youngster energy is further aided by her sing song accent that denotes her Coimbatore nativity. Anjana is all smiles while sharing the details about her start-up.
"We make hand-crafted ice pops in our own facility here and my friend in New Zealand who is in a similar line of activity encouraged me to take it up. Basically an ice pop is a frozen dessert and can be had any time of the day. We use juicers to get the juice out of fruits and add a minimal level of sugar and other ingredients before pouring it into a mould in order to flash-freeze the whole stuff. We hardly add 2 to 4 grams of sugar only per ice pop for the natural fruit has sufficient sweet within it. Water is added in certain cases only and we do not use artificial colours or flavours or preservatives at all. The idea is to use the least number of ingredients in the process and we purchase everything from the local farmers who belong to the clusters like the grape growers association,” says this young entrepreneur.
Anjana has ensured that her processing centre is spic and span. She feeds the organic waste to the cows in the farm. She has begun by supplying her products to a point in Race Course and a lot of care is taken to ensure the quality of the unbroken cold chain. Using less than 5 ingredients is really an innovation and it is shocking to learn that the ice pops available in the market use a lot more sugar besides including unhealthy additives.
She makes her stuff available in parties for children and it is here that she offers customised flavours. Anjana plans to add a new line of cream-based flavours. She made a combo last Diwali consisting of flavours like rosemilk, pan and rasamalai.
"My dad tells that one has to believe in what one is doing. I believe in my product and since there are a lot of similar things available in the market I strive to do my best. Once it becomes a habit success will follow. Our experiments and market feedback are taking us further. Would love to use exotic fruits like berries but they are yet to be available in the manner required by us. We custom-make tender coconut popsicle for a restaurant and are ready to innovate as per the dictates of our clients. In cases like musk melon we use the pulp too."
“FROOZE” is well known at sports events these days after as many as 2,000 ice pops were used at a recent Kidathon. Anjana is sure of going places with “FROOZE” while adding value to the local food, beverage and dessert industry.