Abstract

In 2019, Priyasha Saluja (Saluja) founded The Cinnamon Kitchen (TCK), a bootstrap start-up focused on healthy snack and bakery products that were not only Polycystic Ovary Syndrome-friendly (PCOS), keto, and diabetic-friendly but were also gluten-free. Saluja had suffered from PCOS since her teenage and her health did not allow her to have fried foods, saturated fats, or processed snacks. A foody with a sweet tooth, she therefore decided to innovate with recipes for PCOS-friendly and tasty food. She started sharing her recipes and healthy lifestyle tips on her social media platform, which later gave her the confidence to start a small kitchen, and soon The Cinnamon Kitchen (TCK) was born. The company touched a revenue of Rs. 60 million within four years and raised Rs. 6 million at a valuation of Rs. 120 million. TCK had launched several innovative, healthy, and guilt-free snacks and bakery products. However, there were a few areas that Saluja had to focus on more. She needed to work on increasing the shelf life of her products. She also had to find a way to scale up her business and work on a strategy to compete with other players in the snack and bakery industry, both established and new

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Identify the various qualities of a successful entrepreneur
• Recognize the challenges and opportunities in the Indian snack and bakery market
• Formulate growth strategies for start-up companies in the Indian healthy snacking market

Keywords

Expansion strategies, Competitor analysis, New Venture Ideas, Bootstrap Financing, Characteristics of an Entrepreneur, Opportunity Recognition and Execution, Method of Generating Ideas and solving Problems