Gourmet Garden

Elevator Pitch-

You are what you eat. But most produce is grown and ripened using a ton of chemicals. Using harmful waters is inducing toxins and heavy metals into the produce. Do you feel you and your family is being deprived of natures' best offering- safe fruits and vegetables?

Enter Gourmet Garden- we grow our own Naturoponic and organic fruits and veggies in specially engineered greenhouses. Our Produce is 100% free of chemicals and we use no pesticides. With a wide assortment of produce, spices, breads and cheese, we guarantee your food safety.

And the best part- we deliver your orders to your door steps within 24 hours- ensuring freshest, juiciest and crunchiest produce you can get no where else. Over 1 lakh families trust us every day, join them and experience the Gourmet Garden difference by placing your order through our app now.

Product Selection Criteria-

The Product- Value Proposition

Serving as a one stop shop for every family's fresh produce needs, Gourmet Garden offers the following value to its users-

• Convenience- Gourmet Garden offers home delivery of produce in the 4 major Southern Cities in 24 hours.
• Freshness- They harvest the crop only after the customer places an order, ensuring freshness.
• High Quality produce- Their produce is either grown in self operated greenhouses or sourced from organic produce farmers and they use no pesticides or chemicals on the produce. This is significantly more important as organic produce available through most stores have notoriously been known to have forged organic claims to reap higher margins.
• Range- They have all the standard fruit and vegetables ensuring they offer the complete basket for its customers through a single channel.
• Variety- Complimentary non-branded products such as pulses, oils, spices, cheese and bakery items which are typically lacking trust are also sold by them.

ICP Creation-

I have created the below 3 ICPs based on 12 Consumer interviews- (Friends and family across age groups though 1-1 )

ICP Prioritization-

Interestingly, though most purchases can be done by either men or women, most fresh produce decisions are taken by the women of the house who run the kitchen and understand the produce better.

ICP 4 values Look and feel and would be hard to stick to the product in the long run. ICP 5 sees the value but is not comfortable enough with digital transactions and finds E-commerce cumbersome. ICP 3 is a valuable customer but values convenience more than quality and might migrate to Quick commerce apps easily.

The chosen ICP should be easy adopters with high frequency usage, an appetite to pay, be Sizable portion of the TAM and have high distribution potential. Further, sticking to the concept of creating and focusing on a maximum of one or two impactful ICPs. Prioritizing Frequency, value to the user and the women dominating purchasing habit (distribution potential), I shortlisted IPC 1 and ICP 2.

Understanding the market

Top down approach-

An average urban user spends Rs 14,000 p/m ( https://www.livemint.com/industry/retail/less-affluent-households-spend-2-000-on-monthly-groceries-11667242654408.html )

Thus,

Market size = no of users X avg spend per user/mo

TAM= 10 Mil * Rs 14,000 = Rs 140 Bil/mo

SAM= 3 Mil * Rs 14,000 = Rs 42 Bil/mo

SOM = 1 Mil * Rs 14,000 = Rs 14 Bil/mo

Bottom up approach-

For a house of 3, the mother takes the purchasing decision and purchases around Rs 14,000 worth of groceries per month.

Usually, affluent people cover atleast 15% of the cities (Assuming SEC A1,A2,B1 can afford the increased price offering - which is 15% of total urban population, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/ecommerce-penetration-in-rural-india-challenges-barriers-and-solutions/ )

All top cities have roughly 10 million population- i.e. 3.3 mil houses (10mil /3 per house average)

If we consider 15% of the 3.3 million houses/ city, we have 0.5 million/ city.

Considering top 6 metros, we have 0.5 x 6 = 3 Mil households that we can serve as our SOM

Thus SAm = 3 Mil * Rs 14,000 = Rs 42 Bil/mo

SOM here as well can be considered 33% of

Channel Selection-

Wrong Channels-

1) Organic-

Organic is not a great channel to choose as the effort would be very high, results would be slow and its a highly competitive space. The breakdown is given as as-

• Search Intent (fulfil)- healthy fruits and vegetables are synonymous to healthy living and cooking and with so much content out there on the internet, creating interest for new users would be super expensive and it would be better to target people with search intent.
• Buying intent (create)- the cost is high but the outcomes are low as indicated by the table below-

2) Product Integrations-

Referencing the products on customer's phones (table below), apart from Mygate and Cult, the adoption for other apps would be very low. However, Cult already promotes healthy food through eatfit and might not promote gourmet garden through their app. Further, due to the high involvement needed due to the e-commerce nature of Gourmet Garden, integrating with Mygate also might not yield much results as the customer will have to spend a lot of time in selecting and processing a payment through the app. Hence product integrations as a channel is not a good fit for Gourmet Garden.

Prefered Channels-

1) Referrals-

As the Gourmet Garden is dealing with healthy and fresh Fruits and Vegetables for the ICP that is predominantly women between 25-40 years old and is heading the kitchen, a good spread of word of mouth will ensure that the product is used and more importantly ensuring retention due to social confirmation.

Referrals would work such that both the referrer and the referred person get rewards in app. The rewards-

The primary motive for referrer would be Dopamine and secondary would be fame as the referrer would find utility in the product and share it for the benefit of health for their loved oves (Dopamine) and also would like to be the one who signals to her circle that she "orders only super healthy produce for her family" (fame)

Brag worthy aspect of the product-

• Eliminates the need to select/sort produce, what is delivered is always fresh and crunchy!
• Free home delivery the very next day
• Also has an assortment of exotic produce
• Chemical and pesticide free

Product platform currency-

Though we can use cash as a form of currency, given the premium nature of gourmet garden, it would be better to give seasonal exotic produce free to the customers when ever someone refers. These produce will be added to the next order, ensuring that the currency stays within the product.

Eg- post 1st successful referral, the referrer will get a pop up that says "Thank you for referring our app, as a token of gratitude, please choose one of the 3 options as a complimentary gift from Gourmet Garden (Option 1 - 500g kiwi, Option 2- 250g Lychee, Option 3- 500g broccoli".

Whom to ask for a refferal-

• Ones who place a second order within the first 15 days
• Ones who rate the app 5 star or rate the delivery 5 star in the app
• Ones who mention the app positively on social media

Also, if the customer has already come through a referral, more emphasis would be given to such customers as they are more likely to refer further.

How will the users discover-

• For customers who are placing repeat orders, it would be post purchase of the second order
• For customers who are rating the app/delivery, it would be through a pop up/ push add notification
• Further, there would be a clear referral tab on of the app under where the customer can refer and track the various referrals as shown below-

How can users share the referral-

The referral here would be a 1-1 referral and thus whatsapp makes most sense while mail and social media would be practically ineffective. Thus, the referral screen would have both a sharable unique link that can be shared though either clicking the whatsapp icon or can even be copied (using a pin icon) and shared through any medium of the user's choice.

The Message would read-

"Hey! I have used Gourmet Garden to buy my produce and i am loving the experience. They are fresh, crunchy and are 100% Chemical free. I highly recommend them. Check them out at <Link> and also as a good karma, they will be giving you some free samples for your first order! "

Tacking the referral-

Under the referral tab as explained though the images above (under discovery), there will be a list of people showing where they stand in the purchasing funnel (app downloaded, items in cart, purchased but didn't accept order, orders delivered) CTAs will be within each tab so the customer can remind the referred person to finish the purchase.

Referral for a non user-

Since the referral would direct to the playstore, it would redirect the user straight to the playstore or appstore. However, the link in whatsapp would carry a banner of Gourmet garden logo with images of fresh greens and a couple of vegetables so the referred person feels that the link is safe to click.

Motivating Continued Referring-

Since the Referrer is getting exotic produce, upon milestones, we can send a bundle of produce (similar to a fruit basket gift) for reaching referral milestones of 10, 25, 50, 100 and beyond and also sending the same during festive seasons (eg Diwali, Sankranti, etc) embracing Indian culture.

2) Paid ads-

For Gourmet Garden, assuming an AOV of Rs 750, frequency of 2 times per month and average retention of 9 months,

Life time Value (LTV)= Average order value x Frequency x Retention

LTV = Rs 750 x 2 times/mo x 9 months = Rs 13,500

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) = Rs 1,800 ( https://www.upgrowth.in/understanding-the-average-customer-acquisition-cost-by-industry/ )

CAC : LTC ratio is 1800 : 13500 or 1 : 7.5

As the CAC to LTV is 1 to 7.5, paid adds can be a great channel.

Channel Selection-

The channels considered-

• Instagram- As both the ICP (Supermom Shreya and Healthy-bee Harini) use Instagram and as Instagram also aligns with a 'premium' perception, it makes sense to promote Gourmet garden primarily through Instagram.
• Youtube- As the ICP 1 (Supermom Shreya) also spends time on Youtube, and since food influencers and affiliate marketing can be done through their channels.
• Google ads, google app campaigns and Programmatic advertising would not attract the right set of customers and would cost high and yield low results.
• Facebook and other social media apps would not necessarily attract the ICPs as much as YT and IG would attract them and hence scaling would not be possible here and is thus not selected

Audience Strategy-

For this early growth phase, we would be targeting women (ICP 1 & ICP 2) who are alarmed by the news of chemicals in produce, finding it hard to trust other sources, and are deeply committed to themselves and their families to eat good.

Content Strategy-

The Objective of the paid marketing would be to primarily increase app downloads and the secondary objective would be to add products to cart.

Due to the trust nature required for Gourmet Garden to flourish, there will be multiple micro influencers talking about the brand on Instagram and youtube ads. The influencers would be from both the cooking and the fitness space.

The messaging would be the primary differentiator of the product- trusted source for chemical free produce.

Further, the placement of the adds would be primarily through ads on reels/shorts and retargeting people who are highly engaged on the content.

Content Loops-

The content loop will be based heavily on referral and user WOM as follows-

• The Hook- A desire to eat best quality produce (crunchy, juicy, fresh)
• The Generator - An existing customer
• Distributor- Often word of mouth or through IG posts (people posting exotic produce pictures)