Tempeh is made by a natural culturing and controlled fermentation process that binds soybeans into a cake form. Hello Tempayy’s products are made with three ingredients: non-GMO soybeans sourced from farmers in Madhya Pradesh, water and starter culture. Because of its natural fermentation process, tempeh boasts a high protein count and “world’s best kept protein secret,” Ramasubramanian said.
“The capacity at our Bengaluru facility is currently 75 tonnes a year. By December, this capacity will go up to 150 tonnes at this unit and by January, we’ll have our second facility. We’re currently looking at locations, but we expect that it’ll be somewhere in the West; somewhere in Maharashtra,” Ramasubramanian told ET.
This is in line with the company’s expansion strategy, he said. In March 2021, Hello Tempayy which is a plant-based protein-rich offering meant to add nutrition and flourish to the vegetarian plate was launched in Bengaluru. Soon after, it was launched in Hyderabad and later in Chennai. In the early part of next year, Hello Tempayy will also be available in Mumbai and Delhi, Ramasubramanian said.
“As we move to Mumbai and Delhi, our goal and strategy on production is to decentralise and create three hubs in the country at a minimum, one hub in the North, one hub in the West and one hub in the South, and then opportunistically grow those hubs out or just make the existing hubs bigger,” he said.
The company is also toying with the idea of another production facility in the South, Ramasubramanian said.
Interestingly, Hello Tempayy is looking at a two-pronged approach to growth. One involves its range of ready to cook Hello Tempayy natural and marinated products which are four variants — natural tempayy, simply sriracha tempayy, peppery szechuan chilli tempayy and spiced tawa masala tempayy. This plan includes scaling up and expanding their line to different cities in addition to coming up with new marinade flavours.
The other aspect that the company will aggressively target is the Hotel/Restaurant/Café or HORECA segment where Ramasubramanian said the traditional Javanese food made from fermented soybeans is receiving great interest as food establishments are experimenting with adding tempeh as a new vegetarian/vegan ingredient on their menus.
“Post lifting of the lockdowns we have launched in several restaurants and cloud kitchens across the three cities and are also in the menu planning phase with many more,” he said.
Further, Hello Tempayy could soon be introduced as an ingredient in products of some FMCG companies as Vegolution India finds itself in preliminary talks and in the product development stage with about a dozen FMCG players for the same, Ramasubramanian said.
