The food industry is among the most dynamic industries in the world. There is a slew of companies that are introducing new products and categories focused on capturing emerging opportunities. A flurry of mergers and acquisitions has occurred as food and beverage firms strive to buy their way into the healthier category. Whilst customer desire for healthy food and beverages drives these types of corporate decisions, it is the larger, behind-the-scenes research and development (R&D) that offer firms market traction.
The role of R&D, especially New Product Development has certainly taken center stage. However, startups don’t always have the technical expertise, while larger companies don’t necessarily have the flexibility or bandwidth to respond with agility and speed to the dynamic market needs. Thinking Forks is one such leading Food R&D consulting firm in India, offering end-to-end R&D and Technical solutions to the Food & Nutrition industry.
Established in 2014, the company’s services span the entire value chain, from concept development and refinement to creating a viable commercial product in the market. The services include support on nutrition, regulatory, claims, packaging, manufacturing, and advisory. By pursuing an integrated, comprehensive one-stop-shop approach to solutioning, Thinking Forks has emerged as a partner of choice to large global and national players as well as a vast number of startups in the food domain.
The solutioning is supported by a team of experts who have decades of leadership experience with leading global food & nutrition organizations. The team believes creativity, technical depth, and agility are its key differentiators which help them offer solutions that meet the needs of both new
and established enterprises including a few Fortune 500 companies.
The company was founded by Rinka Banerjee in 2014. She is the recipient of the ‘Top 15 women transforming India’ in 2019 awarded by the Niti Ayog for the work done by her in Food & Nutrition. Rinka previously led R&D for Foods in South Asia at Unilever.
"Working for a large transnational organization offers you a ringside view of emerging market trends and the realization that the ecosystem lacked a facilitator organization that can address these needs”. Therefore, Thinking Forks from inception has been designed to address client needs based on a robust approach that combines strong technical understanding, design thinking principles, and a flexible and agile delivery model through modular sprints.
It combines rapid prototyping techniques with robust innovation process management to create distinctive product and packaging concepts with the potential of Intellectual property creation for its customers. Thinking Forks establishes rigorous work frames by defining Nutrition Philosophy, and Regulatory guardrailsand assists its customers in generating innovative and consumer impactful claims, both on and off-pack within the work frames. The firm also does a comprehensive technology transfer by scaling up the client's product and packaging prototypes from a lab scale, establishing feasibility on a pilot scale, and shelf life, implementing commercially viable manufacturing processes and quality systems and bringing its customer’s products to market.
The efficacy of their approach is evident when you consider the company has helped launch about 150 new products over the last eight years for more than 60 brands around the globe. The company has built a global network of partners as part of a collaborative ecosystem that is available on tap to provide solutions related to Design Thinking, Go-to-Market strategy, Sourcing (Ingredients and Packaging), Patents, Pilot scale manufacturing, and more. Thinking Forks collaborates with a diverse group of global partners that includes established suppliers, manufacturers, service providers, universities, and subject matter experts. This is a critical competency for delivering new solutions with technical rigor, agility, and speed. It also has access to commercially scalable novel food ingredients and packaging solutions, analytical capability, research, and clinical experience through its network.
“In the past few years, we have built a robust Design to Value approach to engineer product portfolios for our clients, and have delivered cost savings of up to USD $10 million. We do this using our ability to link consumer preference with product cost drivers”, highlights Gourinandan Tonpe, Co-Founder & CEO of Thinking Forks. Gourinandan has more than 30 years of R&D experience in leadership roles with Unilever and Mars Wrigley in Asia Pacific.
Thinking Forks team takes immense pride in the portfolio that it has been able to bring from concept to market, and boasts a clientele base of several global organizations of repute including Amazon, Unilever, Tata Consumer, Danone, Dole, Pepsico, Dr. Reddy’s, Reliance, DSM, Jubilant Foodworks, Kellogg’s; large Indian corporate including Britannia, RP Sanjiv Goenka, Haldiram, and established startups including Licious, Yoga Bar, 4700 BC, Kapiva, to name a few.
“We keep a sharp eye on emerging trends, changing consumer need states, and the innovation landscape. We endeavor to sharpen future product strategies for our clients and curate innovative solutions that are in line with consumer trends, and sustainable development goals", concludes Rinka Banerjee, Founder & Chairperson of Thinking Forks Consulting.
