Chocolate calling

Many might say ‘happiness is a bar of chocolate’ but for Shubra Acharya it’s the ‘Happiness Bar’. During her second year of Bachelor’s degree in Christ University, she started her B2B chocolate venture by creating and supplying chocolates to various business clients. Once she completed her MBA, she found her true calling and started her own company which offers customised chocolates that deliver across the country. ‘Happiness Bar’ became a full-fledged professional chocolate company in 2013.

“My brother runs a corporate business, and they would get regular orders for chocolates during festivals. During one of my Christmas vacations in college, I asked my brother if I could volunteer at his office as I didn’t want to stay idle. He told me to take up a short chocolate course and from his next order onwards, I would help him,” she recalls. When she started helping around in the family business, she received a lot of requests to make customised chocolates. She started researching on business models and found a similar portal in the US. She took it up as a challenge to tweak the strategy and make it available for the Indian audience. She adds, “‘Happiness Bar’ gives individuals a chance to customise their chocolate bars with messages, ingredients and even wrapping.”

One can log on to their website and make their own ‘wickedly’ delicious chocolate bars. The options range from ‘Create a bar’, ‘Superstars’ to ‘Mini Bars’. “Customers can choose how they want their chocolates to be made. They can choose any five ingredients from the list that they want added in to their chocolate — dark, milk and white — which also includes edible letters to spell out names or occasions. We also handwrite messages if required. The possibilities are endless,” says Shubra. She mentions that the demand increases especially during festival times.

Initially, most of chocolate bars were the conventional combinations. They later experimented with different blends such as coconut and cinnamon, coffee and mint, and even potato chips! “I personally thought potato chips in chocolate was great. But it didn’t really click with the audience and we had to take it down. One of popular chocolate combinations today is chocolate and chilli,” she adds.

While it took them some time to perfect the art and get the right delivery system to courier the bars, they also learnt that about 60 per cent of the buyers are returning customers. She notes, “There’s also a trend with orders that come from one particular place. We get one boy or girl who orders from a particular hostel. This is then followed by 100 others from the same building.”

Even though ‘Happiness Bar’ competes with other chocolatiers, Shubra believes that her ability to customise individual orders makes her work unique. So if one wishes to become a chocolatier, they just have to go on to the website to feel like a new-age Willy Wonka. After all, it’s just a few clicks away and makes a great gifting option!

For more details, visit www.happinessbars.com