Calicut Halwa Online: Fulva's Journey

About this episode

In this episode, host Shan A Salam sits down with Shabas Ahammed and Sanu Muhammed, co-founders of Fulva, a direct-to-consumer brand that took traditional Kozhikode halwa online. The founders share how personal travel experiences and observing regional food gifting traditions inspired them to reinvent how halwa is packaged and sold. Instead of selling large, single-flavour blocks, they created curated boxes containing 24 distinct varieties. They describe launching with a bootstrap budget of 25,000 rupees, navigating regional logistics challenges during local health curbs, and assembling a founding team of childhood friends. The conversation also details their offline Ramadan campaign, Empower by Fulva, which mobilised home bakers and local autorickshaw drivers across Kozhikode and Malappuram, generating 48 lakh rupees in turnover in a single month. They discuss performance marketing economics, packaging perishable food products for national courier delivery, customer retention strategies, and scaling operations into metropolitan markets like Bangalore through quick-commerce platforms.

Key takeaways

1. 1Product differentiation can emerge from rethinking packaging and curation rather than altering the traditional food recipe itself.
2. 2Bootstrapped founders can validate initial market demand using lean initial inventory and organic influencer collaborations before making large capital investments.
3. 3Solving custom packaging for heavy, perishable items requires rigorous physical stress testing to prevent transit damage.
4. 4High average order values allow direct-to-consumer brands to maintain healthy profitability while scaling digital performance marketing campaigns.
5. 5Creating hyper-local seasonal campaigns can generate substantial cash flow to reinvest into broader digital expansion.
6. 6Quick-commerce platforms like Swiggy can serve as high-visibility digital billboards that drive customer awareness and corporate bulk orders.

Chapters

1. 00:00Introduction
2. 12:06Foundation of Fulva
3. 15:27Introduction of Co-founders
4. 17:12Early Days
5. 21:32Manufacturing Process
6. 23:07Packaging
7. 26:02Sanu’s Entry
8. 28:55Launch of Fulva
9. 29:47First Sales
10. 30:38The Nipah Situation
11. 33:52Influencer Marketing
12. 35:53Startup Culture at CUSAT
13. 37:53D2C Startup Concept
14. 39:54Empower by Fulva
15. 58:52Impact of Empower by Fulva
16. 1:03:27Marketing Strategies
17. 1:08:52Support from the The Ecom Mafia
18. 1:12:00Quick Commerce
19. 1:14:47Community Questions & Conclusion