Confect: Baking its Way to International Success

Confect is every baker’s dream come true. It sells a range of more than 800 cake decoration products — from sugar paste, fondant, and gum paste, to glaze, lace, sprinkles, and more. Its USP: the products have been designed keeping in mind the harsh weather conditions in India and, as a result, can withstand differing climes across the world. Founder Gauri Varma, or Chef G, as she is affectionately called, started Confect as a domestic brand with a one-woman army (comprising herself) in 2018 and has grown it to a global company with a leading presence on the Amazon US marketplace and a team of 50 women.

However, Gauri's entrepreneurial journey has been filled with challenges, failures, and valuable lessons. Despite financial constraints and lack of support, she pursued her dream. Now, five years later, Gauri successfully runs a thriving online exports business on Amazon Global Selling. Her journey has exceeded expectations, and she remains determined to achieve even more.

It took her 365 days, 400 iterations, and a crash course in food technology to get her flagship product (sugar paste) right. Given the lack of high-quality products in India at that time, Confect was received very well in the Indian market. Buoyed by the response and the rise in demand for baking products worldwide during the pandemic, Gauri decided to explore foreign markets.

In her endeavour to go global, Guari chose Amazon Global Selling as her ally. Her journey from a local brand to a global one demonstrates resilience, focus, innovation, and resourcefulness, and a little bit of help from Amazon Global Selling!

Blending customer needs into product mix

Chef G, a B-school graduate from Oxford University, pursued a corporate career before transitioning to becoming a chef and starting her own patisserie. Frustrated by the lack of high-quality baking ingredients, she innovated and started creating all-weather cake décor products herself. This led her to establish Confect, aiming to solve the problem for fellow bakers.

Gauri recognized early on that it’s important to cater to the needs and preferences of its core customer base, in this case women who want to bake tasty but healthy goodies for their loved ones. Given that 80% of bakery product consumers are children, Gauri wanted to come up with products that were not only high quality, but also healthy.?

Gauri's unwavering dedication drove her to continuously improve and learn in her pursuit of perfect baking ingredients. Through extensive testing and feedback from fellow bakers, she developed a high-quality, weatherproof sugar paste after a year of hard work. Confect's sugar paste stands out for its natural, unprocessed ingredients, excluding artificial colors or additives. It is gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, and trans fat-free, fortified with iron, folic acid (vitamin B9), and vitamin B12. With 50% less sugar than usual, it is 100% vegetarian and can withstand any weather condition.

Conquering global markets with Amazon Global Selling

Even as Confect was doing well in the Indian market, Gauri started dreaming of taking her company international. She had heard of ecommerce exports but was not sure how to go about it. When the Amazon Global Selling team reached out to her and suggested she register on the program to access Amazon’s global marketplaces, she expressed her apprehensions. She was worried how she would obtain the necessary certifications, arrange for product inwarding and barcoding, and ensure safe shipping of the products.?

Gauri took a leap of faith, and with Amazon’s assistance, Confect was able to expand its business and reach global markets, leveraging the platform’s tools and resources to navigate cross-border selling. “Amazon Global Selling provided me with invaluable support in launching my exports business, deciding which markets to choose, managing my inventory, etc. It also provided localization support, tax and compliance guidance, and international shipping solutions. The Amazon team made exports so easy that it almost felt like child’s play,” says Gauri.?

Despite initial concerns about perishable products, Gauri's first consignment from Confect reached the US within a week of registering on Amazon Global Selling. Confect gained popularity on the Amazon US marketplace, becoming a leading Indian bakery product business with high demand. Encouraged by this success, Gauri aims to expand to other Amazon marketplaces.

Beyond the commercial aspect, Gauri was motivated by a desire to empower women facing financial and social challenges through her company. Confect is a 100% women-owned and operated business that showcases the exceptional leadership and entrepreneurial skills of its female team members. With a team of 50 women and growing, the company is committed to expanding its reach while staying true to its values.?

“When you learn to break the barrier is when you truly blossom,” says Gauri. She did so and look at where it has brought her.