ITC and Yippee : The noodle showcase

I was in Goa for an office offsite and during a break, while casually browsing through my personal mails, I saw the email from Suprio about a bloggers meet at ITC Grand Central by ITC Foods. I was definitely curious.  The mail said “The meet called ’You Ask We Answer’ is aimed to introduce you to what all goes behind creating successful food brands as well as an open platform to answer questions related to packed foods”. After the controversy about packaged noodles (read Maggi) I was surely skeptical about packaged food especially packaged noodles. However, I also could not deny the fact that Maggie was always the comfort food for me and my husband.

I replied in the affirmative and thus was on my way to ITC Grand Central, Parel, on Saturday, 5^th Dec. The event was to start at 11am. I reached by 10.50am and was guided to CJ’s where the Bloggers meet was scheduled.  Most of the guests had arrived and the hall was buzzing with food bloggers, ITC officials and chefs. The event started by 11.10 after everyone had tea and sandwiches for breakfast.

Mr. V L Rajesh, CEO of ITC Food division, took the stage first and introduced us to ITC Foods. Even though ITC Foods Division is the youngest in the house of ITC, it now ranks among the top 5 food companies in India. ITC Food’s most successful brand “Aashirvaad Atta” enjoys  a market share of 27% among all brands in that category. Diversifying into different foods, Yippee Noodles was soft launched in Sep 2010.

He then mentioned the “Lead Controversy” because of which the whole market for packaged noodles dropped by 85%. As the market leader went down, it created a huge disturbance in the market and all products in the similar category were heavily affected. Each had her/his own interpretation of what was wrong in packaged foods.

This is when Mr. Rajesh handed over the stage to Ms. Kavita Chaturvedi , Head of Marketing , ITC Food Division to guide us through the journey of Yippee noodles.  Yippee is Kavita’s baby thoroughly. She even called herself “the mother of Yippee noodles!” With a detailed presentation, Kavita guided us through the whole process that Yippee noodles goes through before landing in our kitchens. A lot of R&D happened before Yippee was finally launched pan India in Mar 2011. For instance, children wanted long noodles and mothers had no option but to break the square noodle blocks so that they fit into round cooking vessels. This is  where the idea of round noodle blocks came for Yippee. ITC  owns one of the finest brands in wheat and the team really takes pride in that. So who else to decide on the quality of the wheat other than the team that handles Aashirvaad? That very same team select the finest quality wheat for Yippee. Kavita revealed that Yippee noodles has gone through 1300 tests in world class laboratories so that the noodles remain non sticky even after 20 minutes of cooking.

ITC took all measures to clarify the doubts regarding packaged noodles. All answers were cleared through their website http://www.sunfeastyippee.com . The Company started the initiative “You Ask We Answer” and the brand managers themselves checked and replied to  consumer queries.  ITC is a homegrown company which  believes in complete transparency. The company has a  policy of “No Questions Asked” if any packet is found damaged even at the retailers. Their website has 740 test reports to prove that these noodles are 100% safe.

The Bloggers were given a chance to clarify all their doubts through a Q&A session with Mr. Rajesh.

There was an impromptu cooking competition between the bloggers using Yippee noodles. 5 tables were divided into 5 teams. There were ingredients available to choose from. I was a part of Aashirvaad Achievers and we all created Yippee Fusion Chaat. And guess what – that was the winning dish. Weren’t we glad!

This meet was aimed at busting the doubts that has come up regarding packaged foods especially packaged noodles. Yippee noodles are safe and utmost care is taken at every step of creating these noodles from Procuring to Packaging.

Post contributed by Mayuri R Konwar