A different approach to engaging with differently-abled people
Think of ThankUFoods when you plan to buy sweets the next time
At the famous south Indian city of Madurai, the Sundarajanpatty locality has an interesting institution. When you go there, you will find a school full of children going about their daily routine like at any such place. However, on closer observation, you find that the school’s children are all visually impaired but remarkably conduct themselves like their normal peers.
This school, run by the Indian Association for Blind (IAB), is the brainchild of late S.M.A Jinnah started it in 1985 to create equal opportunity for the visually impaired like normal people through their skilling and education. Though Jinnah lost his eyesight at thirteen in an accident, education, self-determination, and others’ assistance helped him overcome his limitation. As a result, he completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in Economics, winning gold medals at both levels.
Jinnah’s visit to the United States in 1981 on an International Rotary scholarship made him aware of the support system and technological assistance to the visually impaired when he was at Boston’s Perkins Institute for the Blind. He then vowed to help others become self-reliant through education and opportunities and started the Indian Association for the Blind (IAB) in 1985.
IAB started its business venture, ThankUFoods, in 2018 to employ visually impaired people whom it had trained to make and sell cookies. The business was born to provide gainful employment to people IAB was teaching and benefiting from the evergreen demand for healthy and tasty snacks.
Initially, IAB succeeded in finding employment for differently-abled people through corporate tie-ups, wherein ThankUFoods employees operated counters at cafeterias selling their products to company employees. When it started, ThankUFoods found a good demand for its cakes, cookies, sweets, chocolates, and namkeens. ThankUFoods believes that blind people can also create world-class products given equal opportunities as normal people. Hence, it ensures that its products match the best of other brands in the market and leave consumers happy to repeat their purchases.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic starting March 2020 came in the way of the IAB livelihood venture, making the organization go back to the drawing board to employ its differently-abled members gainfully. Faced with lockdowns and limitations to its employees traveling to sales locations, ThankUFoods changed tack and started an online store for its range of twenty products and has also begun selling its products through retail stores.
Making food through blind people is not an easy task. ThankUFoods has approached such a challenge by training its employees, some of whom have completed the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) training. A chef creates the recipes and monitors the preparation of the products, which the ThankUFoods team uses in making its twenty products. The company uses high-quality ingredients to make the best products and packs those in attractive packaging.
The health pitch: ThankUFoods does not use white sugar or maida in its products and highlights such practice on its website and product packaging. It has branched off into traditional snacks starting with baked goods but sticks to its core belief of delivering healthy snacks using healthier ingredients.
Its product range encompasses the following four categories:
Sweets: Jaggery – crunch, Mysore Pak and seedai
Savories: Boondi, crispies, seedai, ribbon pakoda, crunchies, chakli, mixture
Cookies: Almond, chocolate, cashew, millet
Cakes: Blondie, chocolate, brownie, brownie, almond
They make the famous south Indian sweets, Mysore Pak, with palm jaggery or sugarcane jaggery. The palm jaggery variant is dark brown (almost black) and slightly bitter. Their savories are typical Tamil Nadu snacks but should be appealing to people anywhere in the world. They use millets and red rice for some of their products. Their cookies have butter, and they do not use maida or white sugar. Their cakes contain eggs, but they also offer one eggless cake.
Mysore Pak, a traditional south Indian sweet, contains besan and jaggery. Seedai is rice balls that have urad dal and sesame and come in sweet variants that have jaggery or the savory versions with chilies and garlic. The ribbon pakoda is rice, millet, and besan product in long thin strips having spices and salt.
ThankUFoods’ most popular snacks are palm jaggery Mysore Pak and millet ribbon pakoda.
They offer sampler packs of similar products, making it easy to order for first-time customers and those looking to gift. ThankUFoods has a very simple but attractive website making it easy for consumers to browse their products and place orders. They have a good ordering process and quickly deliver the products that you order online. ThankUFoods has been advertising on social media recently, and you may have come across their online advertisements on FaceBook and some other platforms.
ThankUFoods now has kiosks at more than five hundred Indian companies and has a customer base of more than one lakh. It also has customers outside India as many people living abroad like its taste and healthy range of snacks.
After reading this article, you can support ThankUFoods by ordering their products online. You can purchase the ThankUFoods product for personal consumption, gift it, donate its products to social organizations, or contribute to the right organization. As ThankUFoods also allow gifts for festivals, weddings, or parties with personalized offers, you can order through them for a range of occasions.
You can be sure that though you are ordering from an organization where differently-abled people make the product, you shall receive the best quality product like from any other brand. We liked the product that ThankUFoods sent us, and our friends for whom we ordered a sampler also appreciated the products they received.
You can also support its parent organization, IAB, by donating for their activities and making contributions exempt from tax under 80-G.
ThankUFoods allows you to approach the differently-abled in a new and different way by patronizing high-quality and healthy food products.