Most brands start with venture capital and big ambitions. Sweet Karam Coffee started as a festive side project in 2013, servicing only Chennai with 20 products. Today, they're a national brand available across quick commerce platforms, modern retail, and 32 countries, all built without burning millions on paid ads initially.

Meet Veera Raghavan: The Accidental Marketer

Veera Raghavan isn't your typical CMO. Before joining Sweet Karam Coffee at inception, he spent nearly three years at Google's Operations Center, managing SEM operations for a team of 15 analysts optimizing Google Ads and Search Ads 360 campaigns. His background in data visualization, strategic planning, and campaign management gave him an unusual lens for consumer brand building, one rooted in ruthless efficiency rather than brand mystique.

At Sweet Karam Coffee, Veera manages a multi-crore digital ad budget while driving growth across D2C, Quick Commerce, and modern retail. His work blends data-driven decision-making with instinctive storytelling, and he's built SKC's multi-channel engine through precision analytics and sharp consumer understanding. He's also active on LinkedIn, sharing insights on marketing, brand building, and storytelling over a cup of filter coffee.

The Beginning: A Problem Worth Solving

"We started Sweet Karam Coffee in 2013 as a festive brand," Raghav begins. "We realized there was huge demand for festive times; Janmashtami or Diwali. People consume a lot of sweets and snacks for their home or for gifting."

But they noticed something troubling. "When you come to Indian snacks, especially South Indian snacks, most of it has always been packed in ordinary packages. You usually don't know where it is manufactured from." Meanwhile, Western and North Indian products were packaged and branded well.

The data was concerning. "Almost 65-70% of the market was dominated by Western snacks. The share of Indian snacks was diminishing. The elder generation was consuming this, while younger generation, who's going to eat this? I will have pizza, burger."

2013-2015: WhatsApp Orders to Website Launch

The first year was Diwali only. By 2014, they expanded to Janmashtami. "At that time, it was more of a WhatsApp and a Facebook page. People call us on phone or reach out on WhatsApp."

In May 2015, they launched sweetkaramcoffee.in but only for Chennai. "We had about 20 products and we started really slow. Our ambitions weren't so big. We didn't launch a pan-India website because that is the only market we understand."

Word of mouth worked. "Over 5-6 months, we were doing this only for Chennai. Then people from Bangalore started reaching out." By early 2016, they expanded to Bangalore, then pan-India.

Building on ₹100-200/Day: The Side Hustle Years

"Ad spends were very minimal. I'll be honest, it was about 100 rupees, 200 rupees a day, just like how every small business starts. We were doing this for almost three, four years."

And crucially, "We were also working in our own corporate jobs. It was not like we were doing this full-time. This was more of a side hustle. Be it me or Anand or Nalini or Srivatsan, all of us were working in our own jobs."

By 2020, they had reached 40-50 lakhs per month. Then COVID hit.

The COVID Pivot: Essentials Category Boom

"When COVID happened, if you were just selling sweets alone, you were not seen as an essentials brand. But because we had rasam powder, sambar powder, appalam, pickle and we were categorized as essentials. So we were allowed to deliver."

The timing was perfect. "Everyone wanted to stock up. People wanted to buy for one month, two months. Your basket sizes went really high during that period."

The growth was phenomenal. "2020 to 2022, we crossed two crores a month. This is when we started taking it seriously. Some of us started quitting our jobs and started taking this full time."

By 2023, D2C plateaued at 2.5 crores per month.

The Quick Commerce Revolution: 2023-2024

Then came the transformation. "2023 end is when quick commerce was slowly starting to boom. Blinkit had just come out of acquisition with Zomato. Swiggy Instamart had started taking off. Zepto was making noise."

Quick commerce offered better economics than traditional retail. "The quick commerce platforms are more receptive to small brands. For traditional retail, there is a lot of onboarding cost. You have to pay certain fees, category managers. Plus once you give stock, you may not be paid for 90 days. But quick commerce pays within 30 days."

The results were immediate. "In the next six months after we got listed, we went from 2.5 crores per month to almost 5 crores per month."

The validation was powerful. "I used to think is this brand only surviving in Chennai and South markets? But when we got launched in North, our Delhi and Gurgaon numbers were phenomenal and equally good or maybe even better than our Chennai sales."

Today, "just from Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart alone, we do about 4.5 to 5 crores per month."

Understanding Quick Commerce Behavior

"Quick commerce is a different ballgame altogether. When someone is ordering on Blinkit or Zepto, they have already decided the product. 85-90% of the purchase decision is pre-made before they even come to the platform."

This shaped their strategy. "Discovery happens outside. Your content marketing, your influencer marketing, your offline brand building, that builds the brand equity. But the revenue is coming from quick commerce."

The Data Advantage

"We work very closely with a platform called GobbleCube. They give us insights into what is our competition doing, what is the category share, where are we losing, are they gaining because they reduced prices or because their availability is more in dark stores."

This impressed platforms. "When we first went to these platforms and told them we're working with these sort of analytics, even the category managers got really excited. This brand is very serious. So they also started working more closely with us."

The Product Philosophy

The "No Palm Oil, No Preservatives, No Maida" positioning came from testing. "The moment you say no palm oil, the click-through rates are very high. When these three are put together, the click-through rates become phenomenal."

It's also differentiation. "Almost 98% of the category uses palm oil. So when you say no palm oil, it becomes very unique. And we are one of the very few brands doing it at scale."

The cost is real. "Palm oil is actually very cheap. When you replace it with healthier oils like sunflower, groundnut, rice bran, your cost automatically goes much higher. But we still wanted to stick to it."

The Janaki Paati Story

"We are all people from South Indian background and food has always been an integral part of our lives. When we were growing up, it was our grandmothers who used to make food for us. All the festival delicacies, daily food and everything was made by them."

The connection is genuine. "Most of us involved in this startup, our grandmothers have played a very important role. So some sort of a tribute to them, we named this entire brand as Janaki Paati."

It's strategic positioning too. "When someone is buying this, they are not buying from some company. They are buying it from a grandma. She's the face of the brand."

The emotional truth resonates. "Food, especially South Indian, has always been grandmother's food. Whatever grandma made is the best. When you eat your grandma's food, that satisfaction or the nostalgia factor is much higher."

Performance Marketing Evolution

"The way you do creatives for Meta, Google, in-app advertising on Blinkit, Zepto they're all completely different. Meta advertising is largely what we do. About 80% of all our digital ad budget goes into Meta."

The challenge? "Most quick commerce platforms do not have an in-app advertising solution. Blinkit has, but it's super exclusive and only their top 100 brands. So we are not able to advertise on Blinkit yet."

The solution: "Discovery happens outside through content marketing, influencer marketing, offline brand building that builds brand equity. Then conversion happens on Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart."

Creative Velocity

"We produce anywhere between 50 to 60 creatives every month across all platforms; static, videos, carousels."

It's mostly in-house. "All our content is produced in-house. We just have some editors on standby in freelance mode. We also work with a lot of influencers as external content creators, they produce 20-30 creatives each month."

The challenge? "How do you ensure all your creators are still delivering the same message? Making 15-20 influencers tell the same message is tough because each has their own audiences."

AI Adoption

Data Analysis: "ChatGPT is heavily used for data analysis. Literally all the analysis at a top level is done by ChatGPT. Because we have been doing it for five-six years, some bias sits with us. But ChatGPT eliminates that bias."

Creative Tools: "We use Google's Veo extensively for videos. For static creatives, we still use Midjourney. Gemini Nano has been a real game changer."

Decision Making: "AI is largely used for content ideation. We put our initial thoughts, then let AI create 10-12 different variations. The same No Maida, No Palm Oil, No Preservatives, while we had to do a lot of A/B testing before, today in ChatGPT's world, it becomes much more easy. It analyzes stats and tells which audience will resonate more."

Future Plans: They're exploring AI influencers and even creating an AI version of Janaki Paati. "Paati will be super happy. She is someone who has always been breaking conventional methods. She is also interested to see her own avatar."

Looking Ahead

Sweet Karam Coffee's decade-long journey reveals a counterintuitive truth: you don't need venture capital to build a national brand, you need patience, product quality, and the wisdom to recognize inflection points. From ₹200/day Facebook ads to ₹5+ crore monthly revenue, Raghav and his team proved that authentic brand building, powered by data and timed with market shifts like quick commerce, can deliver exponential growth. As they explore AI-powered content, expand retail footprints, and take Janaki Paati's recipes global, one thing remains clear: the best marketing strategy is a product so good that grandma would approve.

This post is based on our conversation with Veera Raghavan, CMO & Founding Team Member at Sweet Karam Coffee, in Episode 6 of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky. Listen to the full episode → hawky.ai/podcast