100 years of slow cooking versus 3-second scrolls: MTR's Gen

MTR Foods' Anupam Nair outlines how the brand is reshaping its products, communication, and innovation cycles to better align with the expectations of Gen Z consumers.

How does a century-old culinary institution, built on the slow-roasted patience of multi-generational kitchens, capture the fleeting, three-second attention span of a consumer scrolling through Instagram Reels on a quick-commerce app?

For a brand like MTR Foods, the answer isn't about chasing viral TikTok dances or forcing corporate acronyms into the corporate lexicon. It is about a calculated, surgical evolution of format, language, and speed.

In an exclusive conversation, Anupam Nair, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at MTR Foods, pulled back the curtain on the legacy brand's Gen Z playbook. From deploying an in-house content studio to leveraging AI to crunch product-testing timelines, Nair reveals how MTR is navigating the thin line between looking old and trying too hard to be "cool."

The three-minute pivot and the death of the TVC

The biggest shift in MTR's approach to the youngest buying demographic is structural. For a generation characterised by "recipe amnesia", relying heavily on food delivery and quick commerce over traditional cooking skills, the product itself had to change form.

Marketing and Growth Officer

Enter the three-minute portfolio: products like Three-Minute Poha and Ready-To-Eat Upma, engineered specifically for hostel rooms and early corporate apartments.

"The communication for our Three-Minute Poha is completely digital," Nair reveals. "We don't create any other content other than digital communication for them. It is short-form content, largely led by Meta and Instagram, not really a TVC-led approach at all."

Also read: The Whole Truth drops 'No Added Sugar' claim after FSSAI notice

For these products, the legacy brand throws out the traditional media budget entirely. Instead, MTR targets sub-cultures directly through platforms like Comic Con and a hyper-local network of food content creators.

"The intent is to convey your core message within the first three to four seconds, ensure your branding is strong, and lead them straight to a quick-commerce site through performance marketing," Nair explains.

Chasing fads vs. true authenticity

Poha and Ready-To-Eat Upma

When traditional brands try too hard to participate in internet culture, they risk what marketers call "discommunication" -- the corporate equivalent of a parent trying to use high school slang at the dinner table. Nair is acutely aware of the danger.

"There is a very thin line between looking old and trying too hard," Nair notes. "Our agencies know who we are, and we know who we are. We don't want to be gimmicky; we want to be relevant."

Nair recalls a viral corporate trend where multiple brands jumped on an "I quit" meme format to trend on social media. MTR's marketing team deliberately vetoed it. "We don't go down that path. Even if there is a product like poha, I won't communicate it to them by trying to 'become cool.' I will tell them that the product tastes authentic -- exactly as you would want a poha to taste."

The core ethos of MTR is patience, but the vehicle delivering it has to match modern life. Nair points to their fresh sambar paste as a prime example: "It cuts down preparation time from 45 minutes to 5 minutes, but the taste of the sambar is exactly the same. The format of delivering to you, because you are short on time and short on skill, is different. My authenticity doesn't change."

Fighting "recipe amnesia"

While MTR adapts to digital demands, the brand also views its role as an educational rescue mission to preserve regional food cultures from fading into oblivion.

Nair

In Bangalore, the brand hosts Karunadu Swada, a curated culinary festival bringing together home chefs to showcase over 100 distinct heritage dishes from across Karnataka.

Read more: Instamart logs 150% rise in protein orders as demand widens beyond metros

"The generation of today doesn't even know what Karnataka's food is beyond Idli, Dosa, and maybe Bisi Bele Bhaat," Nair says. "They come back and tell us they didn't even know the culture was this rich. It's an attempt from our side to ensure that food culture doesn't get lost in this modern wave of just seeking convenience."

The ultimate litmus test

Gen Z is widely regarded as an ultra-vigilant, skeptical generation that aggressively reads product labels, spots clean claims, and calls out perceived corporate hypocrisy.

When asked if MTR would blend into the sea of modern, aesthetic D2C millennial startups if its logo were stripped off its social channels for a week, Nair dismisses the notion entirely.

Karunadu Swada

"It won't blend seamlessly into a generic D2C brand, because D2C brands are trying to project what MTR already is. A D2C brand is trying to project authenticity. We are authentic. If you were to blur our logo, consumers would still know it's an MTR product. Authenticity comes naturally to the brand."

Crunching time with AI

To keep pace with this demanding consumer base, MTR has turned to advanced technology to accelerate its internal timelines. By integrating AI into content creation and packaging designs, the brand has dramatically reduced its innovation cycles.

"What would earlier take a cycle of say three months has now been crunched to less than three weeks," Nair says. "It allows us as a brand to make better decisions and faster decisions as we try and speak to the Gen Z consumer."

For a century-old brand, staying relevant isn't about rewriting history -- it's about changing the speed at which it's told.

The communication for our Three-Minute Poha is completely digital.

Where this fits

Costs, supply and public patience all move at different speeds, and the friction between them is where most food-industry stories actually begin.

Key takeaways

MTR Foods' Anupam Nair outlines how the brand is reshaping its products, communication, and innovation cycles to better align with the expectations of Gen Z consumers
The biggest shift in MTR's approach to the youngest buying demographic is structural
"The communication for our Three-Minute Poha is completely digital," Nair reveals
"The intent is to convey your core message within the first three to four seconds, ensure your branding is strong
When traditional brands try too hard to participate in internet culture, they risk what marketers call "discommunication" -- the corporate equivalent of a parent trying to use high school slang at the dinner table

What people ask

What should you know about Nair?