Interview With Sashi Kanth Visinigiri - Director of COCOFIT PVT LTD

1. Describe about your Business and founder

COCOFIT Private Limited is India’s first Coconut based franchise model business, started in August 2019 in Hyderabad.

COCOFIT has a strong menu of more than 110+ items with everything purely made with COCONUT base. Vision of COCOFIT is to “Believe in Basics and turn COCONUT into a corporate style business”. We are currently in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Pondicherry with 25+ stores across the country. We have got a lot of achievements in our bucket and some of them include: Top 100 Franchises in the country, Most Innovative Coconut Based Food and Beverages Company, one of the fast-growing companies and most trusted Coconut brand in 2020 and 2021. We have been recently recognised by the Government of India under the Startup India program.

Sasi Kanth, the owner of COCOFIT India comes with a strong business background. His passion towards business, cooking and coconuts pushed him to the position that he belongs, with a very strong support from his friends.

2. What is the biggest challenge of being a CEO and how do you overcome it?

COCONUT business is a mass business; it is not as simple as blending coffee or brewing a bottle of beer. The process of making coconut juice is very tricky and involves a lot of physical efforts. We faced lot of challenges to maintain standards, employees, consistency in taste (As coconuts keep changing based on the age of the nut), order delivery rate and cost factors. We brainstormed all the problems and came up with a processing technique through which we were able to resolve all the key challenges. We have recently completed the test run and will be implementing the same across all the stores soon. 

3. Where do you see the company in the next five years and how will you bring about the change?

We are aiming to have 500+ stores across our country in the next couple of years and also expand our presence in the international market. With our innovative approaches in operational optimization, product categories, we believe to become a game changer in the coconut business. We are aiming to start a factory that can produce cold pressed bottled products at scale. Our focus is to create the most efficient operations to make our investors earn the best possible returns.

4. Did you ever feel like giving up on being a CEO and what motivated you to pull this off?

There are few instances where we felt low in motivation but nothing triggered us to rethink our business idea. However, there is one instance that has triggered such thought.

We began our journey in August 2019 and were able to run business very well with good customer traction and achieved an increase in repeat customers. This gave us a lot of confidence and we started taking bold steps by investing in setting up more stores. By March 2020, we invested in two stores and sold two new franchises. We almost drained all our investment and effort in the new stores and then we were hit with Covid-19 Pandemic. The store owner absconded without paying the advance amount and we had to shut our stores indefinitely due to COVID. Those were tough times and it led us to rethink our business survival. 

I am happy that I got enough mental strength to pull off from such a catch 22 situation. I attribute it to our belief in our coconut concept as it is real and pure. Coconuts never let us down!

5. Describe your biggest achievement

We have received multiple awards over the years. However, none of these awards gave us as much happiness as we got while opening our first store in North India (UP). Coconut is part of our regular health diet in south India. But that’s not the same case in the northern part of our country. They believed in our company and started cocofit. This gave us ever lasting confidence in our concept as it is also trusted by people from North India. At one instance, we felt lost due to the high cost of coconut and other key ingredients in the north. To overcome the same, we started our own small scale factory in Hyderabad to circulate the processed coconuts across the country. Using this approach, we could be able to circulate coconuts and other coconut ingredients at very economical prices throughout the calendar year without any fluctuations in price on the basis of seasonality. I trust that this is the biggest achievement for the entire cocofit team. 

6. From where you get the idea for business?

We have received multiple awards over the years. However, none of these awards gave us as much happiness as we got while opening our first store in North India (UP). Coconut is part of our regular health diet in south India. But that’s not the same case in the northern part of our country. They believed in our company and started cocofit. This gave us ever lasting confidence in our concept as it is also trusted by people from North India. At one instance, we felt lost due to the high cost of coconut and other key ingredients in the north. To overcome the same, we started our own small scale factory in Hyderabad to circulate the processed coconuts across the country. Using this approach, we could be able to circulate coconuts and other coconut ingredients at very economical prices throughout the calendar year without any fluctuations in price on the basis of seasonality. I trust that this is the biggest achievement for the entire cocofit team. 

7. What was your aim to start the company?

• To create a brand that can associate itself closely to coconut and also with its benefits.

• To create a world that consumes health conscious drinks as part of their diet.

• To reduce the market fragmentation that is leading to high costs and less availability.

• To create a world class brand that can be linked closely with healthy lifestyle.

8. Tell us some of your failures

Before starting my journey with COCOFIT PVT. LTD, I have started a training company named Experts Training Solutions Pvt. Ltd. in 2013. We have trained more than 5000+ students till 2018. Our vision was to provide quality and corporate level education to students at an economical cost. So we used to charge a nominal fee of 300/- per student. Due to the fragmented nature of the training industry and availability of opportunity through biased means, it led to more mediators between students and us. The cost eventually hiked to 1000-1500/- by the time the proposal reached the student notice board. This led us to rethink our model of business and approach. We worked on generating the online platform for the same to make it more economical and viable for all types of graduates. We have developed 75% of the site using AI & ML. However, it has to be paused in between as we started cocofit parallelly. So I would consider Experts Training Solutions as part of my failure journey. 

9. What is the role of your family in your successful career?

Without my family and friends, we would have shut COCOFIT or would have had only one store by today. They have been part of the entire journey in all phases and helped contribute to its success.

10. What is your message to the young generations and to their parents?

Don’t waste time by thinking about the Idea. In fact, stop sitting and keep working on generating new ideas. Follow the basics, believe in oneself and start selling whatever you believe in. Just do it, rest all will fall in place.