How Cremberie built a ₹15 Cr yogurt brand

About this episode

Cremberie founder Nahas Basheer joins host Shan A Salam to discuss how he built a zero-preservative dairy brand generating over 15 crore rupees annually from Kerala. After working in his family tissue paper enterprise in Qatar, Nahas returned to India to launch a premium packaged yogurt business. He spent six months mastering production at Mannuthy Dairy College, perfected a standardised recipe, and invested in reusable bucket packaging to build brand recall. Nahas describes the early hustle of self-merchandising in supermarkets, resolving retail credit crunches, managing a short 14-day shelf life, and spending 18 months securing shelf placement across Reliance retail stores. He also shares how Cremberie expanded into quick commerce platforms, navigated sampling strategies to acquire repeat customers, and fulfilled an unexpected order of approximately 10,000 yogurt units flown to Gujarat for Anant Ambani's pre-wedding festivities. This episode offers practical insights for FMCG entrepreneurs navigating retail distribution, shelf-life logistics, and brand differentiation in competitive food markets.

Key takeaways

1. 1Reusable, branded bucket packaging can serve as a persistent household advertisement and drive organic brand recall among consumers.
2. 2Launching premium perishable products through modern trade supermarkets targets consumers with the purchasing power and familiarity to adopt them.
3. 3Founders should initially act as in-store merchandisers and conduct direct sampling to observe consumer reactions and convince retail category managers.
4. 4Perishable products with short shelf lives allow founders to negotiate shorter credit cycles, reducing cash flow strain.
5. 5Securing listing in major national supermarket chains requires relentless persistence, often demanding over a year of consistent follow-ups.
6. 6Subsidising low-cost trial add-ons on quick commerce platforms is an effective customer acquisition tactic to spur product adoption and repeated orders.

Chapters

1. 00:00Highlights
2. 02:30Introduction
3. 04:26Idea of Cremberie
4. 04:54Research & Development of Diary Products
5. 14:14Sales Skill & B2B Deal
6. 19:14Investment of Cremberie
7. 20:10Starting Stage of Cremberie
8. 21:55Mindset Shift
9. 23:34System and Operation
10. 25:35Packaging and Manufacturing
11. 28:50Finding the Right Audience (lulu,) & Hypermarket Game
12. 37:17How to Manage Credit Issue
13. 39:17How to solve Shelf life issue
14. 41:47Salary of Founder
15. 45:06Revenue of Cremberie
16. 45:22Sales Platforms
17. 46:52Modern Trade then eCommerce
18. 47:52Sales Splits
19. 50:04Cremberie at Ambani Weddings
20. 55:00Qcom Journey
21. 59:32Best Customer Acquistion Strategy
22. 00:53Next Step
23. 01:06:43Marketing Spend, Operation Issues
24. 01:08:55Ai and Conclusion