Cookme Launches Smart Packs, Bringing Transparency to India's Spice Racks

Business Wire India

India’s spice racks are undergoing a quiet but powerful disruption. Long driven by brand familiarity, colour, and aroma, the spice market is now facing uncomfortable questions around accountability. From evolving conversations around everyday food choices to viral social media debates, transparency has become the most demanded ingredient—especially among Gen Z and young urban households.

The Indian spice market, however, has largely remained opaque. While regulations exist, consumers rarely get visibility into testing parameters, lab results, or supply chain practices. Quality often remains a promise rather than a documented fact. As awareness grows, this gap between claims and clarity is becoming impossible to ignore.

Against this backdrop, Cookme—a fifth-generation business and a brand with a 180-year legacy in the spice industry since 1846, originating from Eastern India—has introduced a significant shift in how quality is communicated. Instead of making louder claims, the brand has chosen transparency through disclosure.

Cookme’s newly introduced Smart Pack features a QR code that leads to a batch-specific laboratory report, accessible to consumers instantly. The report details tests, along with additional category-specific checks, clearly stating standards, testing parameters, and results. Importantly, it also explains—in simple language—what each test means, why it is conducted, and whether the batch meets quality benchmarks.

The initiative highlights a critical truth often overlooked: spice quality is not determined at the factory alone. It is shaped across the entire supply chain—from sourcing and farming practices to storage and testing protocols. Cookme encourages consumers to evaluate value, price, and quality together, based on facts rather than assumptions.

“This move is consistent with Cookme’s legacy of innovation. The brand once held a 14-year patent from 1983 for curry paste and has been one of the pioneers of Ground spices, having introduced the concept of powdered spices in early 1950s when whole spices ruled every household and the concept of powdered spices was merely an imagination or luxury in India. With the Smart Pack, Cookme addresses today’s defining consumer expectation—clarity,” said Mr Subhamoy Dutta, Director, Cookme.

As transparency becomes the new currency of trust in India’s food sector, Cookme’s approach signals a larger shift: quality is no longer something brands declare—it’s something they must show.

About Cookme

Cookme is one of India’s oldest and most trusted spice brands, with its origins in Sutanuti, present-day Kolkata. The root of the brand is interwoven with its ancestral organization, which saw the light of the day back in the year 1846 when the organization only used to deal in whole spices. With a legacy spanning nearly two centuries, the brand has become synonymous with authentic flavours, quality and consistency in Indian cooking.

Today, Cookme seamlessly blends traditional spice expertise with state-of-the-art manufacturing infrastructure, operating advanced production facilities in Kolkata and Bengaluru. Equipped with modern processing, blending, packaging and in-house quality testing systems, these facilities ensure stringent hygiene, safety and quality standards at scale.

With a diverse portfolio covering spices, blended Masalas, Curry Powders, Pastes, Papad and Besan, Cookme continues to innovate while staying rooted in culinary heritage, enriching Indian kitchens across generations.