'We make a premium product': Brooklyn Delhi's Chitra Agrawal on the changing grocery landscape for startups

The Modern Retail Podcast

Grocery and CPG are certainly hot areas for startups, but it hasn't always been that way. Brooklyn Delhi, a company that makes Indian-inspired sauces and condiments, has been in the business since 2014. This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, founder Chitra Agrawal talked about growing the business -- and the current DTC landscape.

Brooklyn Delhi began as a predominately local company. Agrawal got laid off from her marketing job but had already been building a following as a food blogger. It seemed only natural to try her hand as an entrepreneur. In its early years, Brooklyn Delhi made its achaar products, an Indian pickled condiment, and mostly sold it locally in New York City.

The brand started getting on shelves in small grocers, as well as became featured in trendy Brooklyn restaurants. "We always pictured our product on store shelves one day," said Agrawal. "But to get there, I think we first knew that we needed to start at this very local market level to kind of understand what was it that people thought about the product."

It took some time, but the strategy worked. Today, Brooklyn Delhi is available nationwide in stores like Whole Foods, as well as available on its direct-to-consumer site and with meal kit services like Blue Apron. And it's expanded its products beyond its hero achaar product to simmer sauces.

There have been some road bumps. For example, Agrawal said Trader Joe's was in talks with Brooklyn Delhi for a potential private label partnership, and then she noticed that the retailer ended up making its own achaar product that looked suspiciously similar to hers. Agrawal decided to go public about what she viewed as blatant product copycatting.

"I wanted to say something because I wanted people to know that we did not pack the watered-down version of Trader Joe's," she said. "Because so many people had come to us and they were just like, 'this doesn't taste right, is this your product?'"

Even so, the company has moved on and moved up. The focus now, said Agrawal, is to grow the DTC arm as well as expand its product line. Currently, Brooklyn Delhi has 11 SKUs, but Agrawal hopes to have as many as 15 launched in the next year.

"There's going to new a lot of new product coming out for Brooklyn Delhi," she said.