“Khaana banana duniya ki sabse badi kala hai!” | “Cooking food is the world’s greatest form of art!” – Chef Buddhadev Gupta played by Amitabh Bachchan in 2007 Indian film Cheeni Kum.

An idea that Nazia Jawwad came up with at a regular family dinner, is now a platform where passionate home chefs can benefit from by widening their reach to food enthusiasts who appreciate the essence of home cooked delicacies. Despite not having the bandwidth or resources like restaurants or cloud kitchens, these home chefs have diverse skills and vast talent.

With HoKitch, Nazia aims to empower the home chef community as well as enhance customer experience by providing them with the convenience of enjoying global delicacies from hygienic home kitchens. HoKitch is working on building a community and to be the go-to platform for home chefs that are blessed with the spectacular skill of cooking great food.

Some food for thought…

The traditional ordering process today takes up a lot of time and effort of the Home Chefs. Providing details of their menu, sharing prices with customers, coordinating payments and deliveries is a time-consuming process. In addition to this, they have the uphill task of marketing themselves. Their current marketing model has its limitations as it is restricted to word-of-mouth or social media groups. These challenges faced by Home Chefs takes away their time from what they are truly passionate about – Cooking!

Similarly, for consumers who are looking for simple and delicious homemade food, their options are currently limited to chefs they know personally within their circle or referred by someone, and also through social media groups. Besides knowing limited chefs, not knowing the prices or the menu items means constant back-and-forth communication with the chefs that is required even after placing the order. Along with the payment process, the follow-up on deliveries for a consumer is also quite toilsome.

So, what’s the recipe?

Currently operational only in Bangalore, HoKitchintends to build a community for Home Chefs and also enhance the experience for their customers, by replicating the traditional food ordering process into a 360-degree solution.

For Home Chefs:

• A platform that improvises the traditional food ordering process.
• Setting up days and time when orders can be accepted as per their convenience.
• Provision to mention pre-order notice period.
• Option to purchase supplies.
• Integrated delivery and payment.

For Customers:

• All Home Chefs are FSSAI registered.
• Access to more than 2000 homemade delicacies across Bangalore.
• Orders can be placed in small or large quantities.
• Payment can be done online and delivery is always taken care of.
• Easy order tracking.

Living in a diverse society, we often end up with an acquired taste for different cuisines. Despite the abundance of choices available today, nothing compares to the delicacies prepared in a Home Kitchen, by an impassioned chef. So be it a healthy meal, a sinfully indulgent meal or a simple gluten-free loaf of bread – HoKitch has a huge variety of delicacies for every taste.

Two peas in a pod…

With over 8 years’ experience as a HR Professional, Nazia quit her corporate career to take on the journey of exploring food at the age of 30. She is extremely passionate and enthusiastic about food and photography. Her belief that “Food is the only thing that invokes all five senses!”, has inspired her fulfilling food journey.

When you combine the two passions, you get a fervently created social media platform that showcases the best of chefs and restaurants thus giving them the credit they deserve. You can drool over her great work by following her on Instagram – @naziajawwad. Her passion for food and understanding of the significance of food creators getting well-deserved exposure and a platform to market their talent is what kick-started the idea of HoKitch last year and the platform went live on 9^th April, 2021.

To know more visit – https://hokitch.com/

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/hokitch.in/?hl=en

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/hokitch/

To read more Startup Stories on The Business Press, visit – https://www.thebusinesspress.in/category/startup-stories/

They say you’re not Indian enough if you don’t like tea. But we can vouch for HerBlend’s Gourmet Tea, it’ll change your perception. With its finest tea leaves picked from the plush tea gardens across the country, HerBlend is committed to total enjoyment and indulgence. At Herblend, they only use the finest teas, herbals and floral ingredients to meticulously craft each of their blends. They have more than 100 blends that are made by hand. Single origin teas are carefully chosen from the finest tea gardens, traditional teas are prepared with their own unique twist and artisanal blends are prepared by their experienced tea sommelier K. Kaur with ingredients sourced from across the globe.

One cup a day keeps the stress at bay

Battling various low points in her life, K. Kaur’s soul was set on fire by a cup of tea. The mere aroma of tea leaves boiling is comforting in itself. From having grown up making tea out of almost every flower and herbs they had in their garden for themselves and for people around them. At every point when she saw people replenishing her tea, a satisfactory happiness took over her. In that moment she knew there was something more to it than just setting her soul on fire. With every sip chugged she became more and more confident about her vision to introduce it to as many people as possible. She decided to launch her boutique tea company on 17^th August, 2018 bringing the finest quality loose leaf tea to tea lovers. Not only do they offer loose tea but also hand rolled tea blends with 100% natural herbs directly from the kitchen and flowers from the garden. Each and every batch made here comes with utmost care and precision.

One day hope to twin with twinings

As a certified Herbalist ensuring freshly blended herbal tea for every individual order is HerBlend’s top priority. They procure Tea directly from the best tea gardens across Assam, Darjeeling and Nilgiris. What sets them apart is that they are a woman oriented company and intend to empower millions of tea workers. Above everything, they hope to spread Herbal Tea culture and contribute to tea education through their travels. Having built good relations through their world travels over the years with education centres and tea communities, this has  lead to tea education programs and joint ventures. In the land of high passes, Ladakh, they would love to serve you their authentic Sia(Rose Tea) at their cozy little café..

Word-of-mouth being the most authentic and personal from of publicity the brand has grown through unsolicited brand loyalists, who have promoted the brand for its high quality loose leaf aromatic teas. They have future plans to introduce new product ranges, tea workshops and tea studios in Chandigarh and Dehradun. With their Darjeeling Tea blends having a huge presence in German and British markets, they are spreading positivity, love and aroma not only in the country but all across the world.

To know more, visit –
Website – http://www.herblend.in/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/herblend_/

To read more Start-up Stories on The Business Press, visit – https://www.thebusinesspress.in/category/startup-stories/

“When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice – once for herself and once for her child.” ~ Sophia Loren

When it comes to the health and happiness of a child, nobody knows it better than a mother. Since her primary concern in life is to ensure her child’s safety and well-being, she can go to great lengths to choose what is best for her child. For mothers who are looking for healthy, nutritious, chemical-free baby foods, the search ends here. Launched on 20th July, 2018, Hungry Bums is the brainchild of homemaker-turned-entrepreneur Priyanka Goenka who aspires to help mothers choose a healthy life for their kids by providing the highest quality of food to little babies.

How motherhood gave birth to a start-up enterprise

Besides being an entrepreneur, Priyanka is a devoted mother to her beautiful daughter Vanya. The reason why Hungry Bums came up was because she didn’t want to feed her daughter anything that was not right for the tiny angel. Coming from a chemical based background she knew exactly what kind of chemicals and preservatives were used inside packaged products available in the market and she was aware of their harmful effects on children. Unshakeable in her belief, Priyanka started making everything at home from the basic cereals to biscuits to crackers. To ensure variation in taste, she tried and tested everything possible and it always worked. Her unwavering determination led to learning and educating herself about nutrition and children-friendly recipes from other sources. Finally a realisation kicked in that “yes, it is unique”.

New mothers hardly receive any proper guidance as far as children’s nutrition and food habits are concerned. Mostly they’re unaware of the fact that grains like ragi/oats etc also exist and are easily digestible by little tummies. This is when the idea of Hungry Bums occurred. It was 20th July 2018 when the brand made its first sale, right on the date when Vanya turned one. As Priyanka proudly says “Vanya is the sole reason and backbone behind this healthy and organic venture, packed with nutritious approach. My husband initiated the idea and has stood like a wall through thick and thin.”

Hungry Bums: Where healthy and yummy baby food coexist

Hungry Bums is focused on delivering superior, chemical-free food and nutrition to babies. These handmade, homemade products are delivered across India. As Priyanka rightly says ” Today every industry is competitive but in our industry with all the competition in the market, there is no other brand providing the quality of products like we do.”

The brand is concentrating on online sales the most. Having served 1000’s of customers, Hungry Bums has earned a sizeable customer base owing to its superior quality and impeccable service. The start-up maintains a database of 2000+ clients(which are only its regular WhatsApp clients). In addition to this, other online portals, websites and exhibitions have successfully garnered huge appreciation and eyeballs for the brand and they have all played a huge part in the success of this extraordinary venture.

To know more, visit –
Website – https://hungrybums.in/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/hungrybumsindia/

To read more Start-up Stories on The Business Press,
visit – https://www.thebusinesspress.in/category/startup-stories/

Amishi Jain is an 18 year old entrepreneur who started a Sushi Delivery Business in Pune, named Let’s Roll. She is currently an undergraduate student at Babson College in Boston and is majoring in Entrepreneurship and Marketing. Amishi identified the lack of vegetarian sushi options in her city, more so during the lockdown, and decided to utilize her knack of cooking to find potential in this area of the food market.

Amishi started operating from her home kitchen and opened with a brief menu with just 3-4 options of sushi, as a way to use her time productively throughout the months she deferred her university admission. Today the Let’s Roll Menu has over 14 sushi options, sushi cakes and desserts! Handled majorly by the 18 year old and her 3 employees, Let’s Roll seems to have transitioned into a more permanent factor in her life with a large customer base and sales crossing $15,000 and in less than 7 months of operations. What started off as an experiment is now a path the young entrepreneur considers to pursue after her graduation.  

“Business has been an integral part of my life for as long as I can recall.  I vividly remember listening to my father and grandfather passionately discuss their company and the impact economic changes were having on it. Big words like ‘investment’, ‘business cycle’, ‘market value’ puzzled my childish but intrigued mind.” 

Amishi’s business-oriented family soon had her involved in most of their discussions and asked her opinion before making decisions at their organization. This exposure not only triggered a love for the subject of entrepreneurship but also yielded great results in school; topping her class in the Business Studies CIE final exam (2018), the IB Business Management Final exam (2020) and being awarded the Dean’s List Certificate for Academic Excellence at Babson College (2021).  

Honing and executing one of the vital qualities of an entrepreneur- innovative- Amishi is the pioneer and starter of Sushi Cakes in Pune. She has not only introduced the idea of it to the wide spectrum of customers but has also lured several competitors into the market. Eventually, she started to add a variety of desserts such as brownies, cheesecakes and cookies, flourishing in a whole new section of the market. 

It is unlikely for an 18 year old to find time when juggling between the IB curriculum, SAT classes, career counselling and social life. “The pandemic is/was a bane for most, but a boon for me.” says Amishi. She found the time to discover her talent in cooking and the scope to commence her own venture. Amishi is now looking at employing more staff and moving into a cloud kitchen as she plans for Let’s Roll’s smooth functioning during her absence upon returning to Boston for her education. 

“Entrepreneurship inspires me due to its numerous opportunities, possibilities for success and space for creative thinking.” 

To know more, visit –
Instagram
@amishijain_
@lets_roll_pune

To read more Startup Stories on The Business Press, visit – https://www.thebusinesspress.in/category/startup-stories/