iD Fresh Food live streams the making of its idly & dosa batter

This ‘TransparenSee’ campaign will run from 10 am to 5 pm till 3 April 2022.

iD Fresh Food has announced it will live stream the making of its idly-dosa batter on its website and YouTube for five days from 10 am to 5 pm, till April 3rd, 2022.

The Bengaluru-based food processing company calls this campaign ‘TransparenSee’ and, in a press release, revealed it will give people “a never-before, no-filters, real-time view of iD’s state-of-the-art Giant Home Kitchen at Bangalore.”

The live stream will let you watch the making of the brand’s idli dosa batter from all areas within the factory – the raw material feeding area, urad dal feeding zone, fenugreek feeding zone, water mixing zone, grinding zone, batter ready zone, packing zone, chiller entry point & chiller exit point.

This campaign also marks the first-anniversary celebration of the Giant Home Kitchen spread across 80,000 sq.ft. in Bangalore.

Such a move was surprising, to say the least. We wondered if this was a response to September of 2021 when posts on social media alleged the brand used animal bones in the making of its batter and soon enough the entire event was coated with a communal touch.

“No” exclaims Rahul Gandhi, chief marketing officer, iD Fresh Food, when we asked him this question. He tells us they’d received a lot of requests from people to visit the factory but it was not possible keeping the pandemic in mind. It was PC Musthafa, CEO, iD Fresh Food, who conjured the idea of a live stream to satiate the requests.

Gandhi remarks “it takes a lot of courage to set up a live stream because technology can go wrong, security issues can happen… We had been working on this for the past three to five months.”

The timing of 10 am to 5 pm matches is the production time. The raw material is first fed into the machines at 10 am and then work happens in batches till the last hour.

This move of openness from iD Fresh Food a few months after the social media controversy takes us back to 2003 when Cadbury India faced a public and media backlash after worms were found in its Dairy Milk brand of chocolate bars. To regain trust, Cadbury doled out a consumer education program, reached out to retailers, and invited people and media to visit its factories.