Invigorate Foods : How an Indian and a Japanese built a tofu company

When Kentaro Takeda and Naveen Sundriyal started talking to each other on a flight from Japan to India, neither one of them could have ever anticipated how their conversation would alter their lives. Today, they are taking on India's tofu market with their made-in-India Genkiya Tofu line.

Prior to their meeting, Naveen Sundriyal had been working as a Japanese interpreter for most of his career, but didn't feel entirely fulfilled. He wanted to be a part of something special, but he didn't know exactly what that something was. Kentaro Takeda, on the other hand, had dreams of becoming of becoming a film producer. He had worked in the film industry in Japan for a number of years as a camera assistant and editor, and had also been attempting to become a film producer in the United States before being unexpectedly deported. He never expected to become an entrepreneur.

Naveen and Kentaro were both feeling a bit lost in life when they met each other on a flight from Japan to India. However, their chance meeting changed that. They exchanged numbers, and a week later, Naveen got a call from Kentaro. They met the next day, and during that meeting, Kentaro revealed to Naveen that he wanted to try his hand at becoming an entrepreneur by starting an IT business in India. The two of them flew down to The Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore, and began researching locations and ideas for an IT company. The longer they spent searching, however, the more apparent the barrier to entry became: starting an IT business in India, especially as a first-time entrepreneur, is very difficult.

Naveen suggested that Kentaro start an food and beverage business instead of an IT business. Kentaro agreed, and Invigorate Foods was born. They decided that tofu was a good place to start, for two main reasons. Firstly, Kentaro is Japanese, and so he could easily discern whether tofu was of high or low quality. After sampling a few varieties of Indian tofu, he came to the conclusion that Invigorate Foods would do well, simply because the bar had been set so low by other Indian tofu companies. The Indian tofu that he tested was smelly, and the texture was not at all what he was used to. Secondly, tofu is very similar to a popular Indian dish called paneer. The difference is that paneer is a dairy product, whereas tofu is a plant-based, vegan-friendly product. As such, Kentaro and Naveen believed that they would be able to sell their tofu to vegans in India.

After founding Invigorate Foods and settling on their first line of products, called Genkiya Tofu, Kentaro and Naveen started searching for the equipment that they would use to produce their tofu in India. While Indian and Chinese machines were available for purchase in India, when Kentaro compared them to Japanese machines, he realized that they were inferior to Japanese machines, and decided to import from Japan instead of purchasing machines in India. These machines were purchase from Mase Tofu Machine, a company which also came to India and taught Invigorate Foods' employees how to create Genkiya Tofu.

After several months of research, planning, paperwork, and preparation, Invigorate Foods is finally producing Japanese-quality tofu in India. While their company is only in its infancy, you can follow Kentaro Takeda and Naveen Sundriyal as they introduce their tofu to the Indian market using the links below:

Kentaro's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentaro-takeda-586705165/
Invigorate Foods' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/invigorate-foods/
Invigorate Foods' website: http://invigoratefoods.com/
Invigorate Foods' Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/invigoratefoods/
Invigorate Foods' Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/invigoratefoods/
Invigorate Foods' Twitter: https://twitter.com/InvigorateLtd
Invigorate Foods' YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoZj4C-U8M6vFLKDx9rDnfA?view_as=subscriber

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