The Challenge

A new-age distribution platform with deep B2B muscle sought to make its mark in the B2C world—starting with indulgent packaged foods in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets.

The challenge wasn’t reach—it was resonance. How do you earn everyday salience in a space already saturated with legacy players, local favourites, and evolving palates?

Our Approach

We led a multi-modal discovery, blending:

• Immersive, in-home ethnography with live kitchen audits

• Retail-side decoding of visibility, stock flow, and shopper dilemmas

• Group sessions with stimulus-driven decoding of snacking codes and brand meanings

What made the approach distinctive:

• Zoomed in on emotional and cultural drivers, not just taste or price

• Mapped regional palates and semiotic cues shaping both habit and aspiration

• Surfaced whitespace at the intersection of tradition, modernity, and desire

The Impact

The work revealed a rich and textured picture of snacking in small-town India—where indulgence is not just a product, but a signal of identity, progress, and pleasure.

• Emotional and functional cues vary meaningfully by region—even for seemingly universal snacks

• Children and women emerge as unexpected taste shapers, nudging families toward new formats

• Brands win not only through flavour, but through how they encode trust, modernity, and imagination

The insights are now guiding the client’s portfolio creation and launch blueprint—shaping what to make, how to position it, and where to place early bets.