Lil Goodness innovates to create products that address the nutrition gaps of children. From chocolates and dairy snacks to baking and milk mixes and puffs, all the brand’s offerings are fortiťed with vitamins and minerals that are essential for the cognitive and physical growth of children and for boosting their immunity
Story of Growth
Harshavardhan S, co-founder and CEO of Lil’ Goodness, has worked in the health and wellness space for about eight years. It was while helping start Tata Health that he realized that nutrition has a critical role to play in ensuring good health.
“What we eat can influence our health over long periods. For children, particularly those in the age group of 5-18 years, most of the junk eating happens during snacking, but they can be taught to make good food choices. However, looking around the retail shelves or even online in India, I saw that there were limited healthy snacking options for children—a far cry from the entire shelves and aisles dedicated to children’s food and nutrition in European and American stores. The potential for creating impact was huge—this was the kind of scale that I had seen at Tata, where every business was created to impact tens and hundreds of millions of people,” shares Harshavardhan.
The passion to create an impact for 100 million kids and their families is what drove Harshavardhan and his business partner Damanbir Singh to start Lil’ Goodness. “As fathers, we felt that our children should eat better growing up and perhaps that is the most important inspiration that keeps us on the growth path,” adds Harshavardhan.
Innovation at the Core
Product innovation has been one of the key differentiators for Lil’ Goodness. It is the first brand in India to launch gut health-friendly prebiotic dark chocolates. It also has an extensive range of gut health-friendly snacking options for children such as prebiotic milkshakes and cookies. “Our products made from jaggery powder (rich in vitamin B12) and teff (a super grain) are the result of our product innovation and intense research and development. We are the first to use teff as a key ingredient in our products. Teff is naturally rich in iron, zinc, vitamin C, and protein—all essential for growth and immunity,” shares Harshavardhan. All the brand’s products are fortified with essential vitamins and minerals.
Further, to make healthy snacking interesting for children, all new product packs at Lil’ Goodness have been ‘gamified’. “Each pack has a unique QR code that can be scanned to access an online portal featuring content, nutrition awareness-related gamification, and rewards for consumers. We are the first in the category to do this,” conveys Harshavardhan.
Being Customer Ready
The brand stays in close touch with customers. “At Lil’ Goodness, everyone top-down speaks to customers to get a real pulse of what is happening in the market, and what is their reaction and feedback to our products, and to understand macro trends that can shape the industry. We communicate with customers through online channels, use event activations to reach out to them for feedback, and use data from online marketplaces to reshape our go-to-market,” explains Harshavardhan.
The brand uses WebEngage’s customer data platform for online marketing automation of customer cohorts based on website and purchase behavior. “Simultaneously, we use shelf placement and engagement on product packs to drive retail purchases. To increase brand awareness and conversions, we do promotions and ensure our brand’s presence in all events relevant to children. We also use online data to identify territories or pin codes to enter new retail markets,” says Harshavardhan.
For Lil’ Goodness, the vision is to become a Rs. 500 crore brand by 2025, with an intermediate milestone of Rs. 100 crore by 2024. “We want to touch the lives of at least 20 million families with children through our products. The idea is also to scale 10x over the next 18 months and be the brand of choice for consumers when it comes to fun, daily snacking. We plan to expand to about 20,000 retail stores, and select international markets, while deepening our penetration within India itself,” concludes Harshavardhan.
