No filter needed: When PC Mustafa woke up and smelled the coffee

Growing up on a coffee plantation, the son of a daily wage labourer, P.C. Mustafa, founder of iD Fresh Food, was no stranger to poverty and struggle. Unlike many children on the plantation who dropped out of school, Mustafa persevered through it, going on to get an engineering degree and landing a place at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. The company is fast approaching the Rs 1,000 crore company, propelled by the immense popularity of its latest offering: filter coffee decoction. Its success is founded in Mustafa's mantra of social consciousness and fair dealings. He tells Aksheev Thakur his remarkable story...

It is said that cooking is best when the seasoning reminds us of home. During his early stint with MNCs in the United Kingdom and the Middle East, P.C. Mustafa realised his love for the home cooked South Indian fare.  

Idli and dosa are staple fare in nearly every Indian household but batter was always a challenge, especially for working women. At that time, batter was being sold in unhygienic plastic bags, with customers waiting outside in long, snaking queues. Was it fresh? Was it prepared hygienically? Where was it being stored? There were no answers. Mustafa recalls that after his return to India, one of his cousins identified the issue.

It was a simple observation, so simple that everybody else missed it. Mustafa did not. That’s how iD Fresh Food came into being, as a small venture at a neighbourhood store and went on to become a pioneer in the packaged food business.

“My cousins and I rented a 50-square-feet kitchen in Bengaluru and invested in one grinder, sealing machine and weighing scale. We used to deliver the batter on a second-hand scooter. Our biggest USP was that the product was 100% natural, without the use of any chemicals, preservatives, emulsifiers, synthetic stabilizers, artificial colours or flavours. Right from the beginning, we were clear that our products have to embrace the home-made style of preparation; they cannot be factory-made,” he recollects.

Last year saw the launch of vada batter and the traditional filter coffee decoction packs. In South India, where coffee has near-religion status, the preparation of the filter decoction is a carefully followed ritual. It’s a slow process, making way for instant, store-bought coffee powders instead. And as any South Indian coffee drinker will tell you, they’re not the same thing. It was another vacuum that Mustafa was astute enough to fill. The iD decoction was a super hit from the moment it arrived on the shelves.  

“With iD Fresh’s Filter Coffee Decoction, we have simplified the process to a point where you don’t need any special equipment, skilled hands, or loads of time to make coffee now. It’s so convenient that you can actually carry it with you while travelling,” Mustafa says.

“Much like we did with our pioneering product in the idly and dosa batter market, our coffee decoction is a bid to revolutionise the coffee industry. It comes in the form of ready-to-use liquid (decoction) rather than the conventional powder form available in the market,” he explains.

The company boasts of it being their first product to have a long shelf life (three months) and is available for delivery in India, UAE and the US.

Between September 2018 and March 2019, iD filter coffee decoction registered sales worth Rs 6 crore in India, UAE, and the US.

Mustafa calls the response phenomenal.

“In India, we are expecting to touch Rs 100 crores from our coffee sales alone, by mid-2020. It is a key component in our goal to build a Rs 1,000 crore company in the near future,” he remarks.

Their unwavering ethics and the refusal to compromise on quality have brought them greater success than they could have imagined. It’s Mustafa’s mantra, to always be socially conscious and fair in his dealings with traders, customers, investors and employees.  Growing up in poverty, dependent on the ethics and kindness of strangers, taught him valuable lessons. And, unlike so many others, he broke away from the cycle. He recalls a story from his youth, in response.

“During one of the Christmas breaks, a friend and I were working at a ginger farm - uprooting the ginger, cleaning off the mud and leaves, and then packing it.
The farm owner had promised us Rs 50 each for five days of work. Yet he paid me only Rs 40 because he claimed he wasn’t satisfied with my labour. That incident was my first lesson in how people aren’t always fair. I was so hurt that I refused to take my wages and simply walked away, crying!”

Born into a poor family in a remote village in Kerala, which had neither electricity nor roads, education was a luxury that many couldn’t afford.

Mustafa was no stranger to struggle – his father, worked as a daily wage labourer on a coffee plantation, while mother did her best to feed four children at home. The high school was so far away that many of the children who grew up on plantations preferred to quit their education and work, instead. For Mustafa too, it was a close call.

“I was an average student. In fact, I failed in Class VI. The grim reality of working on a farm was jolting enough to get me serious about putting in my 100 per cent at school. As I saw it, education was my only saviour,” he remembers.  He worked hard, earning a good enough rank to get an engineering seat. Later, he attempted CAT, the MBA entrance test and landed a place at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, the institution he credits for giving him the courage to be an entrepreneur.

Mustafa says he has always had an entrepreneurial streak, even through his childhood.  

“When I was barely 10, I used to run a sweet shop in my village during the holidays. The business plan was fairly simple: Borrow money from my uncle; buy chocolates from the market, which was a few kilometres away; and sell them to the children in the village. Later when I was working in Saudi, I started an online used car showroom, which did well initially, but had to be shut down later after the dotcom bubble burst,” Mustafa says.

He concludes by saying that it’s not just about what one learns within the classroom, but also about the opportunities to interact with and be mentored by so many great minds. “Education can be a truly transformative experience,” he sums up.