the beginnings — 4

Back then, CPG and Agriculture were the two things I could relate to for business. Read the beginnings — 3 to understand my thought process.

Rushit’s family has been in the business of automobile ancillaries’ for decades. His family kept on adding new business streams like batteries and petroleum under the name of ‘Prabhat’ (Prabhat means dawn/morning in Gujarati). Rushit’s great grandfather was a well-known business figure in our town and had a reputation for building large businesses. Rushit had a strong conviction about this name believed that the business name — Prabhat is quite lucky for his family.

Mine was a different story. I was inclined towards CPG and Agriculture for business and had a strong conviction about doing something around it.

After multiple failed attempts to start the business, we were convinced about entering the F&B space. We were naive in cooking/baking and thus the idea of starting a cafe, restaurant, or even a cloud kitchen was out of the question. The only feasible options were — a conventional agrifood business or a CPG brand.

We were lucky to find something quite interesting — will park this for now and write about that incident in the next story.

After all the brainstorming sessions, we were all set to form a venture in CPG. Finding an interesting brand name was still a tough task for us. The branding gurus generally emphasize naming the brand more tactfully — different from the name of the venture/entity. However, there are a few schools of thought on this.

Patanjali wave was on its peak back in 2017–18. They sold everything from Shampoo to Besan — all under the same family brand name of Patanjali.

HUL on the other hand followed a completely different brand strategy for most of its products. It had more stand-alone brands, even for similar products (though competing for different target groups) — ‘Lux’ was communicated as a beauty soap while ‘Lifebuoy’ as a hygienic soap.

Choosing two different names was a difficult task for us. We were long for Patanjali’s brand strategy and fell into the trap of cognitive bias. We were ignorant of the fact that a venture is different from the brand. We did not understand our target group, customer cohort, product differentiation, packaging, brand communication, etc., and went with a lazy approach. Patanjali’s strategy can be good for many businesses, but I believe it to be a drawback for us. We are quite small now and can change that strategy in the coming months.

Prabhat was lucky for Rushit, while Food was lucky for my family. This may sound naive to someone, but that’s how we thought about it. Extension of my family business (agriculture food) while an extension of Rushit’s family business name (Prabhat — means morning in Gujarati). This is how Dayspring Foods was born.

We named our venture ‘Dayspring Foods’ and entered into a normal partnership agreement. We applied for the trademark for ‘Dayspring — Nurturing Healthy Lifestyles’ soon thereafter.

This is how Dayspring was born, named, and registered.