Shruti Panjabi is a brand and marketing professional turned entrepreneur who sells people nostalgia served on a stick and dunked in chocolate-y joy. \u201cBefore Pop Hop, I\u2019d dabbled in cakes and cupcakes back in 2011. The dessert space is something I feel really good about because it’s a happy space; no one\u2019s ever critiquing a cake and it\u2019s almost therapeutic. But the cake venture suffered from a lack of scalability because of the requirement of very skilled personnel.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main motivation that drove Shruti to form Pop Hop was to create interesting and unique flavours that were not yet available in India. \u201cWhile travelling across North America, we had some amazing ice cream flavours which we absolutely had to take back home. What we eat in India is very, very different from that.\u201d That led to a year of market research, trial and error, purchasing equipment and finally everything came together. \u201cMy main forte is putting work in the product. What you use is what you get. I learnt on the job and got the best materials.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The choice of popsicle was inspired by another experience that Shruti\u2019s father had at a confectioner\u2019s in Canada. \u201cAlso, popsicles evoke some nostalgia. Some people might not agree with this, but all of us have had popsicles at one point of time in our lives. Also, popsicles are ergonomically sized products.\u201d If one passes a popsicle kiosk or place in a mall, people always look back, Shruti believes. In fact, visuals play a huge role in her marketing strategy. The shop layout and colours have been designed very carefully so as to give a very inviting appeal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pop Hop was such a hit that instead of Shruti pitching to them for leasing space, malls started approaching her for her to open outlets there. By 2020 they already had three outlets, and Shruti was on the verge of striking an agreement with 3 more malls by May 2020. \u201cPost that we moved to a different model. One of my mentors from my former employers, Future Groups, advised me to exit all malls, and that was perhaps the best nugget of advice I\u2019ve ever received. So we did exactly that, and now my retail model is shut. Instead, we\u2019ve innovated to a direct-to-customer model, and have replaced the single helping with a box of 10 popsicles.\u201d The model so far has shown favourable results, and the model is picking up and Pop Hop\u2019s website is under construction, which will augment their visibility further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Shruti has yet to see tangible results from the Growtherator programme, it has definitely altered her mindset regarding her business. From understanding the basics of finance and business to being connected with a brilliant, assorted cohort of women, the experience has been utterly enriching in every sense of the word. \u201cI wish I had done the CFO Bridge session earlier while we were opening, it would\u2019ve been very useful. At a higher level, it has helped me reconnect with the business by introspecting about why I\u2019m in the business in the first place while on ground I\u2019m much more business-oriented now and focussing more on the bottom line as well. I would never look at numbers earlier but that has changed a lot.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other than just serving dollops of sumptuous desserts, Pop Hop has been a very environmentally conscious business, making sure that the outlets were 100% plastic-free. Since the pandemic, they have had to rely on plastics for proper packaging of their products, but they are on the lookout for alternatives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shruti learnt the business on the job. It was trial and error for her, and because of that she had had her truck with both the ups and downs of the business. Drawing on her experience, she advises bussing entrepreneurs to do the same. \u201cDive head first into it. Sometimes things will take off pretty easily, while at others you\u2019ll regret quitting your job. But what matters at the end of the day is your integrity. If you\u2019re in it for the money, you\u2019d never be able to handle the pressure. To build a legacy though, that sustains a business through rough times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Someone who has studied all their life in India knows how \u201clearning\u201d is still a remote concept in many of the schools within the country. Preeti Rani is one of the people who figured this out not while attending school, but while spending time in one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13650,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[30,31,32],"class_list":["post-11886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growtherator-bangalore","tag-entrepreneur","tag-growth-story","tag-growtherator-bangalore"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13651,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11886\/revisions\/13651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shandilyafamilyoffice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}