The start-up story is not new. Neither is that of India’s emerging breed of foodpreneurs. This is about a generational shift in thinking and a commitment to “living with a purpose” that is prompting a large number of India’s youngsters, with sought-after degrees in engineering and finance, to give up their top jobs and ride the hobby horse. They no longer want to be tied down during their most productive years to fancy jobs but own their lives and pursue their passions. Food being their obsession, these entrepreneurs are on a mission of revamping health food as we know it, taking care of food allergies, rescuing our culinary heritage, supporting producers and seasoning our taste buds with flavours we never knew existed. They are redefining artisanal food, plebeainising and bringing it straight to your homes. And in the process are birthing a new culture of “conscientious eating.”
For a generation which has grown up with privileges, altruism may not be an obvious choice. But this is also a generation that has a ringside view of a world ravaged by disparities and mounting environmental concerns. So, they worry about a future which will be resource-starved, climate-scarred and disease-prone only because of aspirational greed. And they are committed to co-creating a more equitable future where quality of life becomes the most luxurious asset. Take the case of Pareen Sachdeva, 29, whose food brand Lactose-Free Goddess caters to people suffering from food allergies. A PhD in economics, Sachdeva wasn’t ever drawn to the corner office but used her knowledge and her savings to build a self-sustaining business model and map “unserved” food demands. A vegan, she realised that the lactose-intolerant and people with food allergies had very few choices, and were often victims of culinary racism. “Such people are judged rather harshly when they eat out. Many Indians don’t even know that they are silent sufferers, that most issues related to gut health, like gas and acidity, are caused by lactose intolerance. I researched and found that 70 per cent Indians were affected. Very few know that while milk is an additional baby-growth fluid, it is not required by adults. Also, any kind of animal milk brings with it hormones and chemicals that are not in sync with the human body, and hence rejected. We crave milk only because lactose is addictive,” she explains. Her delectable bakes, pizzas, patties and burfis do not have milk solids. Depending on price points, she uses coconut, soy or almond milk.
She is also popularising plant-based foods and meats, which she has designed after consulting doctors, experts and climate healers. “We consume animal meats because we are drawn to their flavour and texture, which can be easily replicated. Besides the animals we consume are all herbivores, feeding on plant proteins,” she reasons. Sachdeva uses seitan, a plant-based meat substitute. Her potato-sprout burger patties have the same protein value as their animal meat counterparts. Following a sustainable lifestyle herself and having taken to vipasana meditation, Sachdeva shows how indulgence can very well be a part of it. “People lack access to nutritional foods, my job is to introduce them to it.”
A son of doctor-parents, health and well-being was not just a business idea for Yash Verma, 27, founder of Shreem Foods, when he returned from the US after completing a biomedical engineering course in 2018. “I started a venture in natural mineral water from Himachal because my parents told me how modern RO systems leached the nutrients in water along with the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS),” he says. There had to be a solution.
We started NMW spring water in 2019 with our unit at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh. It has no TDS variations, is rich in minerals and comes with a PH value close to our blood, at 7.7. With regular use, you won’t need health supplements,” he says. Verma is also making kombucha tea, a probiotic drink with yeast, rosemary, thyme, Himalayan herbs, berries and flowers as a substitute for Coke and fizzy drinks. “This one is naturally carbonated as we stop fermentation at 0.5 per cent, just before it becomes alcohol. The bacteria and yeast form a film on the surface,” he adds. He never forgets what French ocean-explorer and filmmaker Jacques Yves Cousteau once said, “that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” And when it comes to Himalayan spring water, we’ve not yet explored its potential.
Awakening people to a wider Himalayan heritage is what Pema Dolma, 37, does through Emah, The Himalayan Kitchen. After 13 years of being a sound engineer and a Tibetan refugee activist, Dolma decided that putting food on people’s plates was not just a social service, it could be a fruitful social enterprise as well. Besides, if food was the most sensory part of culture, then Himalayan food, and by extension, Himalayan culture, needed resurrection. Having moved a lot as a child, she says, “The Himalayan way of life spans the eastern flank of India, covering Nepalese, Sikkimese, Bhutanese, Tibetan and hill-tribe traditions. I realised food could be the channel to spread awareness about Himalayan cuisine, the culture, food diversity and dovetail my story as a Tibetan refugee.”
Beginning with her home kitchen, her grandmother’s recipe book and an FSSAI licence, she prepared dishes with umami flavours, made people aware about the diversity of Himalayan herbs and spices and busted myths about Tibetan food being all about momos and thukpas. Her menu comes with an explanatory note on where her food comes from, her ingredients mostly sourced from Dehradun, Dharamshala, the Northeast and farms around Pune. People have opened up to her signature Emah Dachi, a soupy rice bowl with green chilli, cheese, Sichuan peppercorn, chosen meat or vegetables. They love her jhol momo, the jhol being a sesame-based gravy with roasted spices and coriander leaves. Of course, her grandmother’s mutton and pork stew with potatoes, glass noodles and smoked mushrooms is a runaway hit.
Sometimes, goodness has a generous dollop at home and can do without sugar. That’s what Kaushani Swami, 32, of Collect Berries discovered during the lockdown. A textile designer, NIFT alumni and luxury retailer, Swami, who wanted 2020 to be her gap year for world travel, took to making nut butter at home to get her breakfast fix. She used all the almond gift packs that had piled up at home to make luscious spreads for herself and small batches for her friends. Then she experimented, infusing them with cinnamon, chocolate and cashew and threw in some pumpkin and sunflower seeds. A few posts and word-of-mouth recommendations later, the artisanal chain, Big Fat Sandwich and Pizza, put her products on the shelf of their Gurgaon store. Today, Swami has a unit of her own in Gurgaon, delivers her jars across India and hopes to be on Amazon by April.
Buying directly from farms, she found India had 22 varieties of almonds, with Gurbandi and Marma from Kashmir being the best in terms of oil content and nutrients. But they cannot be mass produced. So she uses US Nonpareil because it’s affordable, oil-rich, sweet and pest-proof. “I source my groundnuts from Saurashtra. Of course, there are customised nut butters like pecans, hazelnut and walnut, the last being used by many restaurants for making pesto sauce,” Swami says. Her trade secret? Diabetics can gorge on her spreads and butters because she just uses sea salt and dates. There’s no sugar or palm oil. “Dates have a low glycemic index.”
Sustainable food choices also mean sustainable businesses. All these foodpreneurs began with their own capital and ploughed back returns. They are wise enough to keep to a manageable scale than work with partners and never oversell. And all of them have attractive price points. Sachdeva’s hotsellers are pizzas and cookie jars, which begin at Rs 250 for 250 gm, Verma supplies 20-litre water cans to clients at Rs 300 each and Swami’s nut jars range between Rs 300 and Rs 500, for 200 gm.
Starting out from home in 2020, Sachdeva now has a cloud kitchen in Faridabad. Her oven-fresh pizzas are hot-sellers at the Sunday farmers’ market at Bikaner House, awareness being a key promotion strategy. “I deliver all across Delhi/NCR, have direct interface with customers, promote my goods on social media but it is the food-tasting at public places that helps people make sustainable choices,” says she. Verma uses the model of business enterprises in the US, doing a perfect cost-benefit analysis, even if the margins aren’t that high. “That was my real learning, how money works. If you leave the security of your degree, you can become independent and create your own wealth, bit by bit, gain by gain. Else it is glorified slavery of prime years and the banks have a stranglehold,” says the south Delhi-based entrepreneur.
Dolma has chosen a sound business partner. Though now based in Pune, she is originally from Dehradun where she found Vibhor Dora, an IIM alumni and digital marketer. “As Dehradun has a huge Tibetan community, he could relate to my vision and cuisine. Emah, launched last year, isn’t just work for us, it comes with a great amount of responsibility to promote and explain Himalayan culture and support farmers of the Himalayan region.”
She now hosts ticketed farm-to-fork events in and around Pune, ploughing back the proceeds to villages she wishes to adopt some day. “For Vibhor and I, leaving our secure jobs and putting in our hard-earned money to start a F&B brand wasn’t easy but we had to take the plunge. If not now, then when?” says Dolma.
Swami spent Rs 750 as working capital and Rs 3,000 on a stone grinder machine, which she uses to crush the nuts because they wouldn’t lose their flavour or heat to oxidation this way. Now she has set her sights on Himalayan berries and curating the perfect breakfast bowl for children. She wants to be a good mother. “And that can come with responsible, quality living,” she says.
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