Mapro's sweet success: Being happy more important than being the biggest

Mahabaleshwar-Panchgani is India’s own strawberry county. Over 80 percent of the country’s strawberries are grown here. Popular with the tourists, the region has also been made famous by Mapro Foods, a maker of fruit-based products, which was founded here more than 50 years ago.

It is on the way to Mahabaleshwar from Panchgani that one comes across the Mapro name first in the form of Mapro Gardens, a retail outlet and caf, which looks busy even at the hottesttime of the day.

Said to be one of the oldest food companies in India, Mapro specializes in fruit jams, squashes and syrups though it also manufactures chocolates made from cocoa butter. Busy on a Monday morning, Mayur Vora, Managing Director, Mapro Foods, meets us between meetings and happilyunwinds about his journey at the company’s factory in Wai in Satara district.

Mayur saw the company begin from the kitchen of the family bungalow where his uncle, Kishore Vora, a pharmacist started the business. Kishore, who worked at a pharmacy, reportedly set up the business to help the farmers whose fresh produce of strawberries and raspberries werebeing sold at distress sales.

In an 8 x 12 tiny room armed with two kerosene stoves, four vessels and a thermometer (he could not afford the more apt refractometer), Kishore began his ‘processing unit’ with an investmentof Rs 800, where the family cook would help with the stirring.

His first batch of strawberry jams was sold at the same pharmacy store he worked at. Pretty soon, word-of-mouth got more people to the store. In time, two employees were hired and jams were made in increasing quantities and sold under the brand name, Vora Products.

Jam-making soon replaced the pharmacy career. Kishore experimented heavily in the new avatar - he churned out not just strawberry jams but tried his hand with almost all the fruits growing in the area that were bottled into jams, squashes, crushes and juices.

Unexpectedly for Kishore, his business got a fillip courtesy government officials who offered him a fruit processing license in a bid to promote food processing industries in this belt.Soon, the tiny unit nudged its way to other rooms in the 2,000 sq ft bungalow that the Vora family had moved to in 1959.

What worked for Kishore was that his jams had a higher percentage of fruit content - 45 percent against 25 percent of his rivals. Vora then went for a partnership briefly with a friend in Mumbai and the name of the firm was changed to Mahableshwar Food Products with the brand name Mapro, which has been the company’s calling card since.

The hand-over
Though the partnership was dissolved soon, Mapro grew from strength to strength. Mayur says that his uncle was a pioneer with the products he introduced Indians to. For example, he introduced strawberry crush, a concept unheard of in the country till then. The jelly sweet with pectin was another product which, says Mayur, earned the company the name as the world’s largest manufacturer of fruit pectin jelly sweets.

Mayur says that his uncle was resolute in his pursuit of getting the best products out there. He was the first person in India to appeal to the Central Committee for Fruits to allow him to addrose petals in syrups. “Our Rose Syrup is a brand leader in the product category and remains our most popular product,” says Mayur.

In 1983, the then 25-year-old Mayur, an alumnus from IIM-Bangalore who had a brief corporate stint with Voltas, joined his uncle. “My uncle was planning to move on and asked me whether Iwould like to take over. It was a business I was familiar with through all my growing years and Panchgani seemed so much more tempting after living in other cities; so I took up the offer.”

Kishore hand-held his nephew for a few years and then moved on never to look over his nephew’s shoulder. “I go to him if I need advice, but he has let me run it independently,” says Mayur. By the time Kishore quit the business, he had developed as many as 300 different products with fruits. Mayur reduced the number of products so as to focus on a select popular range rather than dissipate their company’s energy on numerous products.

Mayur also bought a 2,000 sq feet factory in 1988, which is where Mapro Gardens is located today. For the first time, the company sought a bank loan of Rs 15 lakh, which took eight months to sanction and the factory could get started only two years later. The bank’s ’treatment’ put him off and he vowed never to go seeking funds. The company does not believe in advertising either as Mayur says, “We can do without it.”

In 2006, when the 15 percent sales tax was replaced with a flat 4 percent VAT, Mayur invested the extra money back into the business and decided to spread his wings. For the first time, thecompany went outside of Maharashtra with a unit in Pathankhot, Punjab besides the ones in Satara (set up in 2006) and Pune (2012). The Punjab facility is yet to start operations.

Being happy
Mayur’s 30- year-old son Nikunj joined the firm in 2008 after a degree in Family Business Management and a corporate stint in the US. It is Nikunj who decided to focus on a new product category - chocolates. But first off his table was the Rs 1 pulpy fruit chew Falero (it wasinitially named to mean Phal le lo and ‘r’ was added to it so as to not make it a tongue twister!). It is now available in six flavors. “Big brands have copied us now,” says Nikunj.

Nikunj then came to market with cocoa-based chocolates in 2010 titled Mazaana (Hindi word Mazaa Ana meaning have fun and also, Hebrew for happiness). These are available in dark and milk varieties with chocolate-coated almonds, raisins, etc. “My chocolates only contain cocoa butter. I will never sell chocolate compounds as chocolates,” says Nikunj staying true to the familylegacy of providing authentic products to their clientele.

The company’s products are currently available in Western Maharashtra and Gujarat. “We are not ambitious. We know this market. We have sold here for 50 years. We take pride in thefact that we have never made a bad product. These things matter to us,” says Mayur.

“We are not known in the north and south of India but people from those parts also travel to Panchgani for holidays and know of us,” Nikunj says, adding that Mapro Gardens gets two million footfalls a year.

This local approach is also seen in the company’s operations. They believe in employing locals at their facilities. This, believes Mayur, is a way of giving back to the community. When Mayur took over, production of fruit-based products was at 1,500 kgs. In 2012, it stood at 11,000 MT.Installed capacity in all the units is 11,350 kg per hour of finished products and revenuesin 2013 were over Rs 100 crore.

Reeling off the figures, Mayur says, “We could grow 10-fold if we want to. But then it will mean going back to a world which we left behind to settle here. We have 30 percent growth year-on-year and are doing better than most companies in the FMCG sector. We are only interested in being happy.”

This article first appeared in Entrepreneur India magazine.