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| Tasty Bite: How Companies Enter A Foreign Market |
| CEO visits UW-Madison, discusses exporting Indian foods and corporate responsibility |
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Tal Macagon (tmacagon)  |
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Published 2009-11-04 10:40 (KST) |
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| This article is only lightly edited. <Editor's Note> |
Like all entrepeneurs that thrive, Ashok Vasudevan, the CEO of Tasty Bite Preferred Brands International, turns good ideas into reality.
At Tasty Bite, Vasudevan was crucial in introducing Indian convenience food to the American market.
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| While working at PepsiCo in Haryana India, Ashok Vasudevan discovered Tasty Bite. They were trying to market their Indian style convenience foods abroad, but had so far failed.
At first, Vasudevan proposed that PepsiCo get involved in importing Tasty Bite foods into the U.S., but the international beverage company was uninterested.
Seeing what he thought was a missed opportunity, Vasudevan decided he would do it himself. With his wife, he bought Tasty Bite outright.
When planning their market entrance, Tasty Bite decided to take advantage of Americans new found focus on health foods. Research showed that, on average, Americans eat six convenience foods daily and, as such, spend much less time cooking.
Alongside this trend, consumers have become extremely health conscious. Health foods are the fastest growing market segment; About forty percent of Americans bought "natural products" (no chemicals, additives, or preservatives) in the last thirty days.
In this respect, Tasty Bite had a particular advantage: all of its products are all-natural and have a shelf-life of up to eighteen months.
But would Americans be interested in specialty, Indian food? Tasty Bite found that they were quite interested.
By its founders measures, however, Tasty Bite is more than a business success. It is "respecting the environment and striving to be the best corporate citizen" possible, Vasudevan said.
When Vasudevan visited the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, he discussed social responsibility and the corporate ecosystem.
Vasudevan explained that in business, he looks at responsibility as a strategy for his company. It is just as much a part of his plan as what his company wants to accomplish, where it wants to do business, and in what manner.
For Tasty Bite, three values are key: company, community, and consumer. The company values focus on growth and superior treatment of employees (Tasty Bite was recently named one of India's top 50 best companies to work for), while the consumer values focus on the taste and value of its products. The community values of Tasty Bite focuses on water conservation, renewable energy, agriculture, and the improvement of literacy and education.
Ashok Vasudevan noted that their objective is to conserve as much water as possible. Tasty Bite operates its own farm where it grows its own vegetables, making water conservation a real, not Potemkin, commitment.
Vasudevan believes that these broad-reaching commitments will mean that Tasty Bite is helping to make "tomorrow ... a better day." Because of the way Tasty Bite is currently structured and coordinated, this is no surprise.
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©2009 OhmyNews
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