M.D.Karthik_SIP Report_PGDM1_1403_UBS

2015
I – Tiffin(Corporate Wellness Solutions
Private Limited)
M.D.KARTHIK
SUMMER INTERNSHIP
REPORT
A Studyof RecruitmentProcess and New Product Promotion ati-tiffin
(Corporate Wellness Solutions Pvt. Ltd.),Bangalore, India

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SUMMER INTERNSHIP REPORT
A Study on Recruitment Process and New Product Promotion
At
Itiffin, Bangalore
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement of the AICTE Approved, Ministry of
HRD, Government of India, for the forward of degree in Post Graduate Diploma in
Management (PGDM) from Universal Business School (UBS), Karjat, Maharashtra
Submitted by

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M.D .KARTHIK
PGDM1 1403
Under the guidance of
Prof. Vidu Soni
Universal Business School,
Kushivili, PO Gaurkamath,
Vadap, Karjat – 410201, Dist. – Raigad, Maharashtra

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Important Quote –
Rachna Nath, Leader Retail and Consumers, PwC
India,
Commenting on the rise of food start-ups and its future said,
“The future of food start-ups hold a positive potential. Presently the
companies are immature, as we can see from a lot of them getting
acquired by bigger companies. The trend will increase in future.
Eateries like Dominos, Pizza Hut etc. alone get 50-60% e-commerce
sales. So the future seems a tough competition betweenthe food start-
ups and single brand eateries. The questionwho will survive is a little
tricky as the one who maintains its logistics well will rise. In any
company logistics play a huge role.”

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT -
This project report is the result of a three months long study at
“Itiffin (Corporate Wellness Solutions Pvt. Ltd)”, Bangalore “under the supervision of Mr.
Tapan Kumar Das (Co-founder, Itiffin)” .I thank him for giving me such an opportunity to
work with the organization and their trust which allowed me the freedom and flexibility to
study every aspect of the organization, with hardly any restrictions on the access to
confidential data.
I must also thank Prof. Vidu Soni for her encouragement before I started the project and her
guidance in the course of the study.
Last but certainly not the least, I wish to acknowledge the efforts and the help of all the
employees at Itiffin
Whose valuable time, suggestions and opinions helped me immensely without whose help this
project would not have been possible.
M.D.KARTHIK
Place: Bangalore
Date: 31st July 2015

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Introduction -
i-Tiffin was started in June, 2013 by Mr Tapan Kumar Das, in
partnership with Celebrity Nutritionist Ryan Fernando and Cricketer Robin
Uthappa. Idea of launching i-Tiffin stuck Tapan, when he observed
unhealthy eating habits of the people. I-Tiffin started with the supply of
intelligent meals based upon the calorie to people at their doorstep and
spread the awareness. It is the only online/offline tiffin services company
that offers healthy nutritious food based upon the calorie content in
Bangalore, India. Meals are designed by the team of scientist and expert
chefs and delivery is taken care by in-house logistic team. i-Tiffin has
already delivered over one lakh meals in its first year of operation and
generating the revenue of around Rs. 3 Crore year 2013-2014. The core
philosophy of the i-Tiffin is to change the way India eats.
Taking this thought of healthy food forward, i-Tiffin diversifying into the
packaged goods business starting with i-Atta. Unlike multigrain or high
fiber atta, available in the market today, these are specially formulated Atta
targeting specific customers only namely Diabetic, Heart Patients, Obese.
i-Tiffin also launched snacks box with healthy alternative. Snack box
launched under the brand “Munch Box” provides low fat, high fiber
content, balanced nutrition and would be calorie defined. i-Tiffin raised
$1million from a family run ingredient export company in Bangalore. I-
Tiffin is planning to raise more funds near about $10million for pan India
expansion.

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The health food domain of the country has been growing at a phenomenal rate
since the pastfew years, owing to the increased level of awareness among people
regarding the benefits of a nutritious and balanced diet. The market is new and
lucrative as not many players have entered the landscape yet. Over the past one
year we have been witnessing a slew ofstartups making debutin the healthy food
segment.
The segment of health and wellness food is estimated to rise to a whopping Rs.
55,000 crorethis fiscal year. Due to the increased prevalence oflifestyle diseases
in the country, people have now become more aware of the causes of these
diseases. This has hence increased the market size of the health food sector,
providing umpteen opportunities for food companies to launch healthy and
nutritious packaged foods in the country. The fast-paced and hectic life of people
has broadened the health-food market enormously.
I chose to do this project because it gave me the opportunity to study the
recruitment styles in a food startup and also conducted the interview of the
logistic executives for the new hubs of i-tiffin being constructed in Bangalore. It
gave me the practical exposure ofall the steps involved in recruiting an employee
and also the on boarding of the selected employees.Also I prepared an employee
retention questionnaire with the help of my supervisor in Itiffin which we handed
over to a few employees for answering.We got to know from this mini – survey
as to what exactly the employees want from the company and how we can retain
them.
I also got the opportunity of selling the i-atta new productto customers and also
went to clinics and laboratories to get the deal for selling itiffin products in their
oultlets.It was a good practical experience on getting leads to our business and a
hands on experience in B2C selling.

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SWOT Analysis -
Strengths
 Itiffin is a healthy food manufacturer and not a caterer.
 It is a nutritious food and health provider.
 Fresh and high quality olive oil,brown rice and green vegetables
are used in plenty for preparing food.
 Insulated box and bags of global standards approved by German
Testing Laboratory Tuv Reinland are used for packaging food
materials.
 Wet waste is sold(Example - Daily dump).
 Combi-oven is used which produces more food for people with less
time.
 Oil used is negligible and the nutrients of vegetables is retained
with lot of hygiene.
 Co-ordination is more among the kitchen staff and bit less among
logistcs people.
 Regular meetings are held to solve internal employee problems.
 Jobs are allocated among people equally and are made to take
initiative.
 As part of the green initiative,waste food is used to producebio-
fertilizer.
 As part of CSR - excess food is donated to the NGO's on a daily
basis.
 Ranjith,a loyal customer of Itiffin now provides IT supportto
Itiffin.
 Employees assign their responsibility to others if they are absent
for work.

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 Petrol conveyance is given to the delivery boys.
 Uniforms are being planned to be given to the employees.Shoes and
jersey of Itiffin have already been given.
 Delivery boys are paid on a monthly basis.
 Moto X GPS device with drop down menu has been given to the
employees to locate the accurate address of the custometrs and
deliver ontime.This is the idea given by the e-commerce head Lester
Cutinha of Itiffin.
 Delivery boys are encouraged to learn more and take the role of
supervisor.
 There are always substitutes for delivery boys in Itiffin.
 Logistic executives are ready to work in any environment and are
easy to handle.Attrition rate is very low in the kitchen and the
logistics department with employees wiorking continously for past
6 months - 1.5 years.
 The logistics people treat the customers as their own people and the
customers also have respect for itiffin in return.Ex - Himanshu, a
normal customerofitiffin started to work for the facebookmarketing
of Itiffin.
Weakness-
 Technology is not used to its fullest potential in Itiffin.Example - The tracker is
not working effectively or is not being used to its fullest potential.
 Still MS-Excel is being used to manually maintain records,instead a proper
inventory software has to be maintained.
 Order management has to be made perfect which is done manually at present.
 The skillsets of all the employees have not been used fully for the attainment of
company's goals.
 Regularly the processes need to be revisited.

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 The euiptment failures have to be overcome without affecting customer
delivery.
 The number of boxes delivered has to be increased.
 Three levels of checking by the supervisor,security personnel and delivery boys
have to be conducted before the tiffin boxes are supplied to the hungry
customers.
Opportunities
 Long term customers can be given loyalty progrAM.
 The marketing team of itiffin has plan to open hubs across pan India in over 20
cities,.
 The Production team of Itiffin can introduce more product lines and carry out
standardization of products.
 Monitor the quantity of food produced in order to avoid wastage.
 Training the employees on a regular basis for more output.
 Maximum utilization of technology for precision oriented results and to save
time.
 Corporate Social Responsibility - Make the delivery boys more knowledgeable
and literate to make them grow in life.
Threats-
 You have to grow fast to sustain in the food startup industry.
 If we dont explore the market and the customers,there is a great threat.Itiffin has
to diversify to survive and improve the service for customers.
 The absence of loyalty programs will lead to the loss of the already existing
customers as well.
 If we cant anticipate,cant utilise the resources we have,then there is a great
threat.

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 Retention policy should be more defined.
 If the logistics department people dont deliver to the customers on time,its a big
threat.
 Regular interaction with employees to be more stronger to avoid loss of
customers.
MARKET ANALYSIS – (source – Economic Times)
Itiffin has plans to expand the tiffin services to 20 cities over three years. It is targeting to
raise 10 Million Dollars (Rs.62.3 Crores) by the end of May 2015 and the expansion drive will
pick up pace after that said Tapan Kumar Das, a former Flipkart executive who co-founded
Itiffin.
While growing incidents of lifestyle diseases such as hypertension,diabetes,kidney and
liver problems, cancer are driving people to healthy eating habits, snacks that are eaten between
meals often remain unhealthy.”Munch Box” is an attempt to address the lack of options to
munch healthy.
“Healthy food has to move beyond meals. It is those hunger pangs between breakfast and
lunch, lunch and dinner where Indians mostly eat junk comprising fried snacks. Our “munch
boxes” for adults and kids would hence be subscription based to encourage them to eat healthy
throughout the day” Das said.
Itiffin has plans to launch diabetic control and ready to cook chapatti flour and customised
salads. The cities where Itiffin plans to enter next include Pune, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata,
Chennai, Delhi and Ahmedabad.It would also set up two kiosks in Bengaluru for its walk in
customers.
The “munch boxes” can be ordered online from anywhere but the tiffin services are
currently available only in Bengaluru. Daily services are currently near 2500 lunch, dinner and
midnight meals to the IT crowd in Bengaluru.

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Promoting Itiffin products at the TCS World 10K Marathon Registration event.

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Itiffin was one of the sponsors of this mega running event at Freedom Park,Bangalore.
CONCLUSION
In retrospective, I can say that I benefited from my stay at Itiffin Inc. in a
number of respects. Firstly, and most straightforwardly, by reading a lot on food startup
Companies and related topics in e-commerce, I expanded my knowledge on an issue
that I used to find complex and interesting.

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Secondly, getting the chance to source, select and present the candidates from the
different job portals like naukri.com, olx was an extremely exciting and instructive
experience.
Also, as noted above, seeing portals and work being done starting from searching the
candidates with the required qualifications and experience, was fundamentally different
experience and to some extent broadened my horizon and to some extent also led me to
position myself more firmly and consciously with respect to some fundamental
questions about the role of theory and the empirical material.
Thirdly, by closely working together with the organization, I became much more
aware of my own position with respect to the function of theory and method of actual
working of an organization. Through many lively discussions with the employees on
both the recruitment process and product promotion in particular and on how to conduct
the whole process of recruitment, I believe to have gotten a better understanding of the
method mentioned above, of the reason for its existence.
I also got a firsthand experience of how mutual understanding and guidance can help
us achieve me the set targets and sometimes work better than the set targets.
To conclude, I can state that my internship at Itiffin Inc. was enriching. The internship
was a rewarding experience and provided me with some new perspectives. I also have
to stress that my colleagues at Itiffin Inc. contributed greatly to making my stay there a
very enjoyable one.
On the whole it was a true pleasure and the organization‘s faith in my abilities was a
real source of motivation.

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Market Analysis -
Customer Base
The target customer is not the next-door bachelor working at a tech firm. Meet
Sidde Gowda, a real estate consultant, and his wife Shreya who runs her own garment
retail shop. They have signed up for iTiffin's service for dinner. "Both of us lead hectic
lives and dinner is the only meal we have together. So we first tried having a cook. But
somebody has to stay at home, monitor them and after a few small things went missing,
we decided to move on. We tried the local neighbourhood food deliverer. While the
food was tasty, prices competitive and delivery on time, we realised it was too oily and
was being made in less than hygienic conditions," says Shreya.
However, Gowda says while the iTiffin food is healthy, it is a little bland for
South Indian taste buds and delivery invariably gets delayed at least a couple of
occasions in a week. "I stay in BTM Layout and by the time food reaches me at 8 p.m.,
more often than not it is lukewarm. They need to improve logistics," he says.
'I am considering investing in the next round... We are a young country but we
need to be a healthy one, too,' says ROBIN UTHAPPA, Cricketer.
Das says that while the problem is not uncommon, the company is addressing it.
"Just like at Flipkart we realised that logistics was key to our success, we have done
that here, too. We have a huge centralised kitchen right now to ensure quality. We are
also developing a hub-and-spoke model. Food, unlike most e-commerce items, is
perishable and Bengaluru's notorious traffic poses the same challenge," he says.
i-Tiffin has set up its first distribution centre at Indiranagar, a suburb. Das says
that the company, which has been operational for five quarters, is experimenting with
multiple models to ensure customer satisfaction. Right now it is even selling take-aways
from this centre. He says eventually the company will examine having multiple kitchens
in the city. "Our current facility is built to cater to 20,000 meals at a time. We are
utilising just 10 per cent of that. So we are stressing on improving delivery
mechanisms."

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Whether in the online or offline space, the health food segment is going to see
a positive growth graph. As people grow more conscious about their health and develop
an understanding about the importance of having a healthy lifestyle, food companies
are going to see enormous growth.
Critical Success Factors of the Industry -
The company has also started delivering snack boxes to schoolchildren in the
city. "We are already delivering snacks to 200 school kids in two schools and once we
iron out all issues, we will scale this up." By March, it plans to roll out its snack boxes
across the country. "It will have finger food, energy bar, health drink, Indian namkeens.
The difference will be that it is portion-controlled, non-fried and will deliver the right
amount of protein, iron, calcium and fat depending on a child's age and requirements,"
Das says. The snack boxes are priced at Rs.100 a day.
iTiffin is earning Rs 3 crore a year and is now looking to enter Mumbai, Delhi,
Chennai and Kolkata in the next 12 months. "For this we are looking to raise around $6
million. Operationally, we have been profitable from day one," he says. The company
is aiming at a turnover of Rs 30 crore by March 2017.
Uthappa for one seems to be happy at the growth of iTiffin. "I am considering
investing in the next round along with other investors. While we are young country, we
need to be a healthy one, too," he says. There are a few other players also in this nascent
segment, like Nutritown in Bengaluru and Calorie Care in Mumbai. However, Das says
that iTiffin with its emphasis on customised plans, affordability and logistics will
triumph over competition.
Unique offering: Tapan Kumar Das at the iTiffin kitchen in Bengaluru. 'Just like at Flipkart,
we realised that logistics was key to our success. We have a huge centralised kitchen and we are
also developing a hub-and-spoke model,' he says.
The name of the investor stands undisclosed but the founders said the startup would look at
a Series A round of $6 million in six months to expand into Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad.
The start-up is also backed by Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa which is a critical success factor
as well.

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Bangalore-based iTiffin, Inc., which runs online tiffin service venture iTiffin.in, has raised
$1 million (Rs. 6 crore) from a large Indian family office in a seed round, a top executive of
the firm told VCCircle.
"We blend advanced nutrition, food science and food service to offer everything
from wellness-inducing to calorie-defined meals, as per the diner's preference," Das, Co-
founder and CEO, told Economic Times.
The iTiffin team of about 100 consists of food and nutrition scientists and expert
chefs who can dish out up to 20,000 meals a day. Its average preparation is 2,000 meals a
day.  Critical Success Factors
Challenges / Issues before the Company –
Tapan Das Kumar, CEO, iTiffin, (which provides tiffin box with nutritious calorie
defined meals to suit their customers’ health requirements), says, “My journey has been
full of challenges, right from when I set up the venture till date. One major challenge has
been retaining customers beyond 180 days. Although everyone knows the importance of a
healthy diet, it is difficult to make people cultivate it into a habit, to be followed on a daily
basis. Therefore, it becomes important to present our customers with different varieties of
healthy food. Secondly, food standardisation has been another daunting challenge that the
Food preparing team of iTiffin has to deal with, in order to give our patrons variety as well.
Rohit Chadda, co-founder and managing director, Foodpanda, says there
are multiple reasons behind the online food business tasting so much success.
“Women now spend more time at work and less time cooking a variety of dishes.
Also, in most cases, cooking is out-sourced. Secondly, fine-dining is more
expensive compared to delivered food. And instead of scanning through the
leaflets that comes with the newspaper, people prefer the mobile app as the
one-stop solution,” said Chadda.
Even as ordering food online is catching on in urban India, especially in the metros,
the category is still at a nascent stage. “Food as a category online is not very big
yet. While the sector has managed to gain traction that is yet to translate into
revenues. Not to forget that the business comes with its own set of challenges,”
said Ankur Bisen, senior vice president, retail and consumer products division at
Technopak, a management consulting firm.
The online food space has two to three business models. While sites such as Zomato
function as an online restaurant guide, Foodpanda, Deliverychef, Mealsonwheels

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and TravelKhana, apart from acting as listing sites also run delivery services for
restaurants. Lastly, the sector has niche players who run their own kitchen.
Like in any other business, the quality of the product is most important. The fact that
the shelf-life of cooked food or even of ingredients is very short, means quality,
or lack of it, can make or break the image of an online company instantly. Agrees
Das of iTiffin who says: “We do not operate as a restaurant, where one can
simple place an order for a dish. We take bulk orders, either for a week or a
month. This process helps us keep track of the total number of meals that need
to be prepared in a week/month and helps in reducing wastage while
maintaining quality.”
As for companies such as TravelKhana and Foodpanda, adherence to timelines is
crucial. “Not to forget, the very idea of starting the business was to provide fresh
meals to railway passengers and if we fail in that, we would surely lose out,” says
Pushpinder Singh, CEO and co-founder, Travelkhana.com. Singh’s venture, which
has seen Google India head Rajan Anandan picking up minority stake, is an online
food takeaway service that delivers train passengers food from restaurants of
their choice.
Even as the category has seen the entry of many players, the delivery segment of the
business is growing faster rate than online businesses that run their own kitchen.
Although orders are taken online thus streamlining the process, the cost of
setting up a kitchen pushes up the overheads.
PESTEL Analysis
(Brief about how PESTEL affects the industry and how could any
future legislations which could affect the industry)
Economic Conditions
Food in India is a big deal. The food delivery market in India is worth $1.6 billion,
growing at 30 per cent a year. But less than two per cent of the orders are placed online.
430 million citizens out of India’s 1.2 billion population are between ages 10 and 29, a ripe
market for e-commerce growth. The average order size is Rs. 400, and the top six cities of
India account for 40% of the market.
Charging for delivery of prepared food is one kind of business model. Another model is
to send trained cooks along with groceries to prepare meals in homes – which is what
CookAss.in will be launching this month in Bangalore, says founder Sameep. “We charge Rs.
30 per mouth as cooking service charge,” he explained, differentiating his offering from
high-end chefs.

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The food ordering industry is also subject to wild price fluctuations due to volatility in
fuel and agri markets. “The average menu in India has 300 items – and the prices change
every 15 days,” said Dwivedy. “Foodpanda” actively does menu updates itself, and does not
leave it to the establishment to update and display prices.
TechnologicalConditions
Getting consumer insights is key for success. “We used to stand in front of ITPL with
questionnaires to better understand food needs of our customers,” recalls Dwivedy. Today,
online ordering and food apps open up new methods for realtime consumer research.

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