From Zero to Summit

I owned creative direction across the whole thing, identity, digital, print, and event, and did it twice.

The report wasn't a literature review, it was original primary research I helped design and run, and it's the foundation the whole summit stood on. No credible data, no reason for the industry to show up.

How do you get thousands of people to reveal their snacking secrets? Simple, bribe them with good snacks.

Our 25 question survey uncovered when people snack, what flavours they crave, and how price drives their choices, covering age, region, and profession, and where stated intentions (people say they want to eat healthier) diverge from real behaviour (taste and cost quietly win).

Reaching a broad, diverse sample quickly meant going multi channel and incentivised:

1. Pop up booths at offices and colleges with QR codes, fill the form, get free makhana munchies, that became Makha Shaka a sub brand in 2026
2. WhatsApp blasts with 20% discount codes
3. Social media pushes with snack samples as incentives

The incentives worked. We gathered insights from 6,000+ people in edition one and 7,000+ in edition two, 13,000+ in total, across a genuinely mixed sample rather than an easy to reach one.

But raw data doesn't change minds or spark conversations, it had to become a narrative, not a spreadsheet.

The real magic happened in translation. We discovered that 71% of Indians consider evening snacking inseparable from their chai ritual, a timeless tradition bridging generations. Yet 9 in 10 people expressed a desire to shift toward mindful eating, revealing India's evolving food consciousness.

The data painted fascinating contradictions: 73% of respondents prioritise taste above all else, and 68% prefer savory over sweet, yet cost remains the biggest barrier for 58% when choosing healthier options. Perhaps most telling, 39% named weekends their prime snacking time, when guilt quietly takes a backseat to indulgence.

Sequencing those contradictions, habit to aspiration, stated intention to real behaviour, is what turned a spreadsheet into something the industry actually cited.

What does a snacking summit look like? Not another corporate event with logos slapped everywhere. We needed a dialogue space where influencers, food scientists, and quick commerce founders could actually connect over India's snacking culture.

It had to be young, fun, data driven, yet conversational, a perfect extension of Farmley, with its own unmistakable identity.

We built it around three pillars:

The clearest signal the model worked, it got a second edition, bigger.