The world's coldest ice cream is hot business. Some times, even making ice cream can be about rocket science.
Pune-based Space Dots Foods uses cryogenic freezing technology the same that's used to cool engines in space craft -- to make tiny beads of frozen dessert, barely 6 mm round. The result is the space-age Dotz ice cream, which has skyrocketed in popularity since it was launched last year.
From just three outlets in Pune in 2004, Space Dots has built a network of outlets and kiosks that covers Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore.
The festival season will see the company introducing other cities to the space-age cooler. Four outlets in Baroda, five franchisees each in Surat and Kolkata and 20 in Bangalore will open shop this month.
Space Dots director Dilip Jagad adds that plans are also on to double the number of kiosks in Delhi and Mumbai as well, to 20 and 52, respectively, and take Pune up to 15, within the next few months.
That's pretty impressive for a company that doesn't advertise at all, counting instead on word-of-mouth publicity. But Dotz is a concept that's bound to appeal to younger audiences.
Inspired by the American Dippin' Dots, Dotz is only the second 'spherical' ice cream in the world. It took account-turned-entrepreneur Jagad and Space Dots' other director Manish Vithalani close to two years to perfect their manufacturing
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