Dipak Sanghavi, MD, Nilon’s Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. reflects on scaling a homegrown pickle brand into a national powerhouse—by earning consumer trust, mastering distribution, and hyper-customising products for regional tastes. He shares how people-led growth, automation, and continuous innovation shaped Nilons’ journey across India.
Tune in to the whole conversation below:
Hi everyone, I’m Mubina Kapasi and today I have with me somebody who has created a product that all of us have consumed in our childhood and still consume today and that’s Pickles, Dipak Sanghavi, the MD of Nilon’s Enterprises. Dipak, hi and thank you so much for joining us today.
Dipak Sanghavi: Thank you for having me here.
Mubina Kapasi: So I think to begin with I must understand how you managed to scale a business that was primarily homegrown, built from scratch and today it’s a brand that literally everybody resonates with, everybody knows of, everybody’s tasted at least once in their life. So tell us about how that journey has been.
Dipak Sanghavi: So the difficult part of the journey was done by my father because the difficult part was to make people convinced that they can have a pickle which is not made at home.
So that’s the journey that 1962-2001 when he was there in the business where he first step was to make people eat pickle which is not made by their own hands in their home and second step was then making a pickle which is comes from market is even more tastier than what is made at home. So many people have that childhood memory. So that’s something that has been very unique for us but post that when I came in my biggest job was to build this product nationally.
So we were a part of 25-30 percent country when I got in the business of even 40 but it was available only on few shops maybe around 10-15 thousand outlets entire India. It’s my journey which took it from that 10-15 thousand outlets to 7 lakh outlets which is the journey that I have traveled. But the unique thing that we did is what we kept evolving because if we understand our consumer what they want, what is that they are looking for, there are different people who are the mass market.
India is not one country, it’s broken into different country and especially when it comes to pickle the taste changes every 100 kilometers. So can you have the pickle which tastes like that they want? So today Nilons has 17 pickle sub-brands. I have a Asal Marathi for Maharashtra, I have a Garvi Gujarat for Gujarat, Rangilo Rajasthan for Rajasthan, Aapan Bihar for Bihar, Shera Punjab for Punjab.
So there are 17 sub-brands which serve a population of a particular market. So you will not find a Shera Punjab in Gujarat. You might have some Punjabis in Gujarat but we say okay Shera Punjab is only for where the majority population of Punjabis are there.
So that’s the level we have gone where people have recipes for four regions, we have recipe for every state. Even if they have recipe for four regions the packaging is same. For us the brand is different, the packaging is different for every state.
So we have gone to that level of meaning customizing the product for the consumer.
Mubina Kapasi: What do you think were some of the most meaningful or the most important actions that you did during the course of this expansion that you think really made the impact?
Dipak Sanghavi: So the first meaningful, so in different stages there were different three but if I want to give the bigger one, in the step of stage one we channelize the energies of the distributor and the team. So when you are a small brand for any salesperson or for any distributor you are not somebody which is running their house.
So you do not get as much attention. So we wanted thousands of people who are associated with the brand to give their attention. So you channelize their energy by for the sales team by giving them freedom and plus incentive and for the distributors by giving them the incentive and also giving them the ownership of the brand.
So that was the first important change because the 8 crore to 80 crore journey single largest reason was people wanted to make this brand successful because it was it started to be their own personal journeys. So you have thousands of people who are having a vested interest to make your product successful. That was the first journey.
The journey two was expanding the distribution. So journey two was going into the more retail outlets going into the deeper distribution of India because they say that in India the most difficult thing to crack in FMCG is distribution. That we are not a consolidated market we are a mom and pop store market.
You have 10 million outlets one crore outlets in India. So reaching to the outlets cracking that code of distribution was the second biggest step and the third step that we are right now in the journey is to go deeper in every region to understand the consumer of that region and make products specific for those regions. That’s the third journey that’s on as we speak.
Mubina Kapasi: What about manufacturing because I mean earlier if you’re catering to x number of people now you’re catering to x into 100.
Dipak Sanghavi: So manufacturing went to significant automation. So if we say the 2001 of nylons was cutting all mangoes by hand right cutting all lemons by hand making four pieces eight pieces.
Today’s all automized you have the entire mango two pieces being cut on the machine the the seeds removed by the machine the chopping done by the machine the mixing done by the machine. So it’s all became mechanical or automate automation happens. So the four pieces of lemon or eight or six everything happens through machines.
We went globally I’m speaking about 2001 to the exhibitions like what you have we are here today are just four five ten years old in India. We did not have machine for various products right. So we travel to exhibitions globally.
We travel to manufacturers of machines globally gave them what are challenges and I will give you one classical example we are the can we were discussing we are the largest tutti frutti player in the world. So for papaya there was papaya is very oblong fruit right it’s not a symmetrical it’s asymmetrical. So if you want to remove the skin of the papaya uniformly either you remove it manually.
So when you are making a 500 tons of tutti frutti is a separate story when you’re making a 10,000 ton of tutti frutti you require automation and in that automation the abrasive peeler was there in India used by us and everybody. So when you peel a papaya manually you get almost 80 percent yield but when you do it through abrasive peeler you get 45 percent yield. So you’re losing so much of papaya right.
So we wanted to figure out a solution and there was no solution in the world. We only saw oblong fruit is potato is carrot you make a potato chip you remove the peel of potato. So there might be a solution to remove a peel of a potato which is oblong fruit.
Can we use a similar solution to use for papaya? We took papaya from India in our carton we went to Dublin and we did trials there and trials were successful and we bought that machine to India and it gives 75 percent yield now. So that kind of innovations we have done in mechanization of getting a technology which was not even designed for that produce bring it for that produce and using it.
Mubina Kapasi: That’s so amazing to hear I mean honestly so if I had to talk about the challenges of scaling this business I mean you know there’s this element of tradition as well in a product like pickles right.
So and now bringing it to the national level. So you’re scaling you have to bring in machines but still people want that little bit of emotional connect with it because it’s pickles. What do you think were the challenges in this scale up?
Dipak Sanghavi: See there are two things when you understand that your the emotional connect comes from so ultimately see it’s the human angle into the though machines are doing it but there are still human angles into the entire process.
So one is the taste aspect which I believe comes from right ingredient sourcing, right processing, right spices, right spice mixes which are designed for that. But I also believe there is a subtle angle which the human even if he is not touching the product still brings is the emotion angle. If he is motivated enough, he’s excited enough, he’s loving his job, is the company’s environment making him feel that.
So I guess I believe that if the human is not happy when he’s doing the job it also has the impact on the taste of the product, right. So they always say that the chef who’s cooking the product should never be angry because the anger also translates into the product, right. When we become what we eat.
So can you also create that kind of environment in the organization where you are excited to do what you’re doing. So we did both the areas where we did the so a lot of my personal interactions for the 10-15 years initially when we are growing almost every month speaking to all workers in the factory. Even today we do monthly meetings where we get everybody on the zoom call and everybody gets connected where the organization is growing or going and we celebrate some of the success stories of the month.
So those softer aspects are also being done and the harder aspects of getting the formulation right, getting the processes right, getting the reporting structures right is also what we’re doing.
Mubina Kapasi: So what’s the strength of the team like today?
Dipak Sanghavi: Today we are 2500.
Mubina Kapasi: Okay and I mean is there somebody you know who’s close to you, who’s helping you take Nilons to the next level that you you know?
Dipak Sanghavi: Yes, so there are two kinds of people I would say that there are some senior professionals who are close to me and who are part of the function heads who are the CFO, the CXOs of the organizations, the chief revenue officers, the chief operating officer who are technically building the structure step by step journey and there are some people who are the old hands into the organization who might not be at that senior level because they might not have that level of capabilities yet developed but they are somebody who you can swear by them that they will do anything for the organization.
So we have two kinds of people who are close to you whenever you require some solution which does not require process, requires magic, no logic. So those are the people who will not use any logic they’ll create the magic for you. So those are people who are also cherished and kept close to the hearts and then there are people who are logic, they might not bring the magic but they’ll bring the logic in such a systematic way that they’ll help scale up.
So those are also to be kept close. Logic, magic both are important. Both are important.
Mubina Kapasi: Eventually, absolutely. What do you think of the different innovations that we are seeing in packaging?
We are in Pac-Mac Asia and there have been some amazing stalls out there that we’ve been seeing such different solutions coming up for things like sustainability, for things like also longevity of the product. Of course for pickles that’s not something that’s important but nevertheless for longevity of the products.
What do you think of the different innovations that we are seeing?
Dipak Sanghavi: See, I believe that one of the biggest differentiator is packaging because two things. One is how can you make the product cheaper, faster, better. That’s one area. Packaging helps to make a product either cheaper, either better or when we say faster meaning you can have a better shelf life or something. So packaging plays two roles. One is packaging is a disruptor.
The classic example if I would say is the I.D. Mendo Vada batter packaging that came in India which disrupted the packaging, disrupted the product. So that’s what something where packaging plays a role. And second is packaging also if you have a very nice packaging, a good packaging design because you consume first from your eyes and then from your mouth.
So that’s the, if you believe that the packaging is telling a story then you also end up buying the product. So I guess both the things. So in packaging even the printing becomes important, the quality of printing, the quality of seals, everything becomes important.
So that’s also the areas that packaging machine does. And also I guess in today’s world when you want to reach the global population you need to have better shelf life, you need to have a better shelf stability of the product. So that also is something very important which I guess this kind of exhibition because for me also or for so my team might be here.
I might not personally be visiting the full two days but the team would be visiting because you get a lot of ideas how the same product can be packed differently in a better way and you can give another twist to the existing product.
Mubina Kapasi: What do you think is the value that comes out from these kind of expos? You know because it’s not very often that you get to actually interact with such a wide variety of vendors or even for that matter people who are in the same industry as you. So how important are events like that?
Dipak Sanghavi: So I always believe the growth journey in life is a factor of going deeper and then wider and then going deeper and then wider.
So these kind of exhibitions help you go deeper into your field and what you learn then you take it wider and so I guess these exhibitions are areas which help us go deeper into our own subject because people who have come here and displaying their products machines they have spent their five years, ten years, three years on building those technologies, building those machines and when you interact with them because the uniqueness of humans are that they are idea creators, idea generators. So when they see certain things they might have not traveled here with that intention but they leave this place with the intention of I can use this mix and match my product and category and create something which is uniquely different. So these exhibitions are those idea creating sessions and not only, so people might come for a specific outcome but people leave with many more ideas which they might have not come with.
So that’s what it is important about.
Mubina Kapasi: Any one word that comes to mind when you think of Pac-Mac Asia? I mean you just came off a conference, you attended it, I’m sure you had some very meaningful conversations. So anything that’s inspired you from Pac-Mac?
Dipak Sanghavi:I guess people are here to learn, people are here to grow.
So I believe even in the session I was there a lot of interactive questions that were asked and the panel discussion that happened. It’s all about diving into the wisdom of the people who have achieved something as a thing and even the manufacturers who are here diving into their life journey and taking the nectar from it so that they can build their own businesses. So I guess these exhibitions are very important to attend.
I have been attending such exhibitions since I was 18-19 and I still keep doing it every year. So it’s insightful.
Mubina Kapasi: Just one philosophy that drives you in life, in your professional life, in your personal life, anything you’d like to share?
Dipak Sanghavi: I simply define my life with three words and that’s the simple philosophy, no complication.
Possibility, positivity, originality. These are the three words that define me and I’m trying to build nylons around this. There are two ways of looking at the coin but I will always look at on a positive way.
Possibilities, there is always infinite possibility. So that’s the possibility aspect and originality is, I believe the world today is about original. You can copy something but you need to add your originality to it and only when you add your originality you can create something different.
So I guess I believe that these are my guiding words of my life. So this is the philosophical aspect of it.
Mubina Kapasi: Such a fascinating journey to hear especially when you think of something that’s so home homegrown and bringing that global flavor to it, not just Indian but global flavor.
So thank you so much Dipak for joining us. Thank you so much.
Dipak Sanghavi: Thank you.