Ice lollies come in mango, strawberry and blueberry flavours
| Photo Credit: Kumaran Rajarathinam
As cool vapours waft from the blueberry yoghurt lolly, I bite into the juiciness of plump blueberries that also has a bit of tartness and velvety yoghurt that unlocks new flavours and brings an instant smile. Tarun Anand, founder of Sticksy ice lollies that come in flavours of strawberry, mango, and honey banana, is happy to know my feedback.
We are at his factory in Singanallur from where he churns as many as 16 flavours of ice lollies, sugarcane sorbets, and gelatos in more than 10 flavours. A truck is parked at the premises, easily identifiable by its colourful decor. “It’s our latest addition, Sticksy van, which we launched during the TNPL matches to offer ice lollies at the doorstep of customers. We fitted a freezer into a customised compact truck. Inside, there are three different chocolate tubs to dip the ice lollies,” explains Tarun adding that the idea is to cover customers across the geography of the city. “We are in talks with residential gated communities to allow us to the park the truck in the evenings at their premises. A couple of schools have also shown interest. We want to keep it operational 365 days.”
The ice-cream van at a gated community
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Tarun, after completing his degree in Culinary Arts at Manipal University, launched Sticksy in 2019. Talking of his five-year journey, he says, in the last one year, many home-grown ice cream brands from Coimbatore and Kerala have entered the market offering sugar-free, zero-fat and vegan options. However, his outlets at Race Course and R S Puram, never faced any dip in sales. “It proves that people are indulging in ice creams and there is a growing demand,” he says and lists his bestsellers which include fruity flavours, and chocolate-based ones.
“Our cookies and cream flavour works well with kids. We also have an ice milk, an equivalent to vanilla ice cream. We focus on familiar flavours like mango or the classic chocolate that brings us the bulk of our customers. Then, we add a mojito or a mango raspberry, to add variety. We stand out because our lollies are not cloyingly sweet. We have eliminated synthetics in all stages of preparations and use natural colours extracted from turmeric for the yellow and a beetroot base for pink and a spinach one for green. Synthetic colours can be the worst ingredient in ice cream.” The frozen berries for his lollies come from Bengaluru, while the bananas and mangoes are from the local market.
Mango ice lollies are always in demand
| Photo Credit:
Kumaran Rajarathinam
With a brick and mortar presence with two outlets, Sticksy now also offers gelatos. “We experimented a gelato where we paired saffron and litchi. We added saffron strands to litchi mix and what we got was an all new experience in taste, colour (pinkish-yellow) and dominant saffron flavours. In ice lollies, we have an inside out flavour, a reverse of chocobar where you have white chocolate coated on the outside. The rose pistachio is inspired by Turkish kunafa where we added roasted pistachio to rose milk.”
Saffron and litchi gelato
| Photo Credit:
Kumaran Rajarathinam
While Sticksy ice lollies come under medium-fat category as the fat content is under 10 percent, in gelatos it is between six and eight six percent. “Our sugarcane sorbet with lemon and ginger caters to a growing customer base of guilt-free desserts. The sorbets are zero-fat. We source sugarcane juice locally and is made into sorbet within four hours to preserve the freshness. There’s no heat treatment or denaturing of the nutrition. Most of my ice-cream sticks are 120 calories. Each has about 10 gm of sugar. I do not want to increase the sugar; I like to keep the taste mild.”
