'It's Asia's new gourmet food'

Q&A: LOKESH BHARWANI, Director, Mad Over Donuts

Doughnuts - believe it or not - are at the centre of a huge new trend in Asia. A new Singapore-based company hopes to spark it off in India too.

You were looking to enter the food retail business in India. But why with just doughnuts?

In the last two-three years, they've become a rage across South-East Asia. In fact, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan, this is a new gourmet trend and people queue up for hours to buy their favourites.

Chains like Jco (Indonesia) have sold almost 100 million doughnuts in one year. We realised that in India these were not available. You get warmed-up versions that no one wants to even look at but not our kind of product.

What is your USP?

We make fresh-yeast doughnuts, otherwise not available here. Everything that you eat at our outlets is made fresh "" in the last couple of hours. We have also researched extensively to develop the right product for the Indian market, for almost two years. We hired experienced food technologists and chefs to come up with the dough mixture at our lab in Singapore.

Even now, we premix it and fly it in so that even our staff at the outlets does not know the exact ingredients and proportions. It would be impossible to replicate our product even if someone tried. Of the 18-20 ingredients that go into the dough, at least 12 are secretly premixed.

The product range is quite extensive. Are savoury doughnuts a big trend everywhere else too or are they directed particularly at the Indian market?

Apart from traditional sweet doughnuts, we have savoury ones, which should be well received here. There are toppings by way of mango, almonds, cheese, cereal, mushrooms, corn and even chaat powder-sprinkled stuff.

Why do you call yours a "doughnut theatre"?

We decided to have a little show window at our outlet from where people can actually see doughnuts being made fresh. We wanted to emphasise freshness and it is a great way of attracting children too!

What are your plans in India?

The brand has been developed by Singapore-based AS Louken, who've done many big F&B concepts in Asia. But the company is family-owned. We will be investing over Rs 50 crore and will come up with about 50 outlets in 7-8 cities in the next two years, including smaller kiosks at airports.