Sitara Foods, a homegrown pickle business goes global with Google Ads

Sitara Foods, a homemade pickle business started by two sisters Aparna and Shravya, has its roots in their childhood. Memories of Indian childhood are often filled with homemade pickles made with immense love and care by their grandparents. Sitara Foods brings back those memories by taking the recipes of their Chinnaka, out of the corner of their home to serve in every corner of the world. Preserving this legacy and a 33-year-old tradition, in the form of bite-size happiness, seeds this business idea.

From serving people in quaint corners of Bengaluru to those living in American cities, Sitara Foods’ business is truly food for thought. What started as a homemade pickle-making business next door, now caters to over 900 customers per month, with the help of Google Ads. A humble company of 4, has now grown to a team of 50 employees, in just 18 months and serves across borders.

Shravya and Aparna, along with their husbands, got together over weekends to recreate Chinnaka’s magic in their kitchens. The recipes that Shravya and Aparna used were unique - they used exotic and rare flowers and fruits which helped Sitara’s flavours stand out.

To get initial feedback, they started selling this bite-sized happiness to their neighbours. The pickles were a hit. Word spread, and Shravya and Aparna started making larger batches. To support them, their husbands started making door-to-door deliveries as well.

To empower the women of the village, Sitara Foods employed grandmothers to work in their kitchen. Making pickles is a tradition for these grandmothers. Simply put, Sitara Foods is in the business of providing delicious food made with love and care.

With supply taken care of, Shravya and Aparna realised that word of mouth was not enough to sustain their growth. They knew there were many more people looking for exactly what they were offering, and so, decided to go online with Google Ads.

With the help of Google Ads, Sitara Foods found their ideal customers and many more like them, who used search terms such as ‘traditional pickles’, ‘Regi Pallu’, ‘chicken pickles’ and more. Sitara Foods served their ads at the right place and at the right time, bringing them more customers and orders.

To optimise their marketing spend, Sitara Foods wanted to understand the point in the customer’s journey where most customers dropped off. In order to do this, they used conversion tracking on Google Ads and reviewed data from Google Analytics, and experimented with different approaches.

From here, Sitara Foods came away with various insights. For example, they realised that their audience responded well to terms such as ‘homemade pickles’, ‘chicken pickles’ and ‘locally sourced ingredients’. This allowed them to tweak their campaigns to focus on these keywords.

Keywords aside, Sitara Foods also made sure they chose the right placements for their ads. The family behind Sitara Foods believes that you taste your food with your eyes first, and with this philosophy, they decided to display their ads on recipe and food-related websites.

All in all, Google Ads has enabled Sitara Foods to increase its visibility and grow its customer base tremendously. The brand can now reach out to Indians living abroad (via websites frequented by them), and they have also succeeded in getting shelf space in one of the biggest multinational grocery stores in the world.

Finally, Sitara Foods managed to ride out the Covid-19 pandemic and even increase its orders, thanks to Google Ads.

How did they do this? Using Google Trends, Sitara Foods uncovered a shift in its audiences’ mindsets. The pandemic made people more conscious of their health, and Sitara Foods used the opportunity to expand its product offerings and created new recipes to cater to their customer needs.

On top of that, the company is also looking to increase brand visibility through video content strategies. The goal is to invest in YouTube ads, and reach out to a wider audience.

On the operational side, while the lockdown made it hard to fulfil orders, Sitara Foods was still receiving enquiries daily. As per Sreekanth, they immediately started running online ads when they could start delivering again, and they saw a 3× hike in orders within just two days.

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