Neeraj Kakkar, CEO of Paper Boat Wants to Make Traditional Recipes Cool For Millennials

What goes around comes around, and that is especially true in the food industry. As in fashion, ingredients are always going in and out of style, albeit, with a few changes. Traditional food is slowly coming back on the radar, and Neeraj Kakkar, CEO, and Co-founder of Hector Beverages, known for Paper Boat, is helping bring it back in a big way.

Superman is here

Kakkar says that he sees himself as Superman, who protects traditional recipes. Paper Boat does have traditional products such as chikki, and aam papad on their roster in order to revamp these products we ate as kids and give them a cool, new look.

“…it’s like being Superman. You have this huge responsibility, and get paid for it. This whole challenge of making age-old recipes and making them cool for the millennials,” Kakkar said during a session at the HT Leadership Summit.

“We were trying to get the technology which has been used worldwide for making chocolate and granola bars, we have been working with farmers in Gujarat to get the right peanut quality,” he said. Kakkar also mentioned that one of the reasons people switched to chocolate from chikki was due to hygiene concerns even though peanut chikki is much healthier.

“…so we’re trying to bring in all the new stuff to this age-old traditional recipes and making them contemporary, we are launching aam papad this month, I am so excited about that,” he said. Keep the nostalgia alive forever Neeraj Kakkar!