Until the 1960s, the food mixers available in India were imported, light-duty models designed primarily for the needs of Western cuisine, mainly blending and liquidising. They were completely unsuited for the heavy-duty mixing required in Indian kitchens, and grinding was still done exclusively using the age-old “grinding stone.”
Legend has it that a housewife, Mrs. Madhuri Mathur, once challenged her engineer husband to develop a machine that could easily tackle the tough chores of an Indian kitchen and which could grind the hardy spices and masalas she used in her cuisine. Her husband, Mr. S. P. Mathur, who at the time was working for the German MNC Siemens, took up the challenge, and the two of them later founded Sumeet Appliances to launch their unique offering – a heavy-duty mixer-grinder engineered specially for Indian cuisine – which completely revolutionised the way food was prepared in India. And by Indians everywhere – the product developed such a formidable reputation that it became the signature item for NRIs to take back with them after a visit to India!
Initially, their quantities were not large, and they used corrugation and a variety of other packing materials to package their mixer-grinders. However, in the early 1980s, they realised that they required more presentable packaging which took less time and manpower to pack and which could protect their goods in transit; and thus approached K. K. Nag to design a solution in EPS. Further probing by the K. K. Nag design engineers revealed a pain point that had not been articulated by them earlier – they used to pack the assortment of blades and other accessories in plastic pouches that they placed in the cardboard outer box, but the blades would get damaged in transit as they struck each other, and, as there were so many of them, some inevitably got left behind while packing.
The K. K. Nag design team got to work and came up with a unique design concept that was not only chic and actually enhanced the presentation of the product, and one that provided great shock absorption in transit, but they also added the unique feature of differently shaped slots on the top buffer in which the blades and other accessories could be placed. This last feature prevented the items from damaging each other in transit and also served as a shadow board, visually reminding the packer if one had been left out.
Forty years later, most mixer-grinders in India still resemble the original Sumeet Domestic Mixer-Grinder; and we are proud to say, the EPS packing still resembles the original K. K. Nag design!
