JOIN USPickles bring in the moolah for home cooks
In India's culinary tradition, pickles, and preserves are used to prevent vegetables and fruit from going to waste. Every family has heirloom pickle recipes passed down through the generations.
Pickles remind Indians of home and has given many women entrepreneurs their dream start in business, especially during the pandemic when home cooking businesses saw an upward curve.
Last year, Yachika Chopra from Goa lost her job with an airline due to the pandemic. It was a double blow when her mother also succumbed to the novel coronavirus. However, after her mother's death, a chance discovery of her diary full of pickle recipes opened up new options for Chopra.
"It almost felt like my mother had deliberately left me something precious and wanted me to take up her pickle-making hobby," she said.
In June 2021, Chopra started making sauces and pickles for her family, inspired by her mother's recipe books, some dating back to 1954. Soon, she found more recipes passed down by her grandmother and started Circa, which now sells pickles and sauces made using these heirloom recipes. Circa sells over 100 jars a month through Amazon and their website.
However, Pickle Me, a Mumbai-based home business, was started to fulfil a more personal, immediate need. Founder Debbie D'Cruz used to have a corporate career before the pandemic locked her down at home. She craved homemade pickles with her meals, and the sheer desperation of not getting them during the lockdown made her start making her own in August 2020.
"As non-vegetarians, we are often starved of good non-veg pickles in the market, and that's what made me want to fill that gap," said D'Cruz. Today, Pickle Me sells prawns, chicken, squid, bombil and pork pickles, alongside vegetarian options. The company sends out nearly 400 jars a month through food groups and word of mouth marketing.
Anita Gupta's foray into the pickle business started a few months before the start of the pandemic. When Gupta visited Pune in August 2019 from Kashipur, Uttarakhand, she found her pregnant daughter craving her homemade pickles. She promptly ground the spices she had brought and made a whole batch of onion and green chilli pickle.
Gupta sold the excess to other families in the housing complex. The response was so enthusiastic that she =made two variants of kala chana (black chickpea) pickle and a sweet and sour version of eggplant pickle.
Both flavours sold out as fast as she could make them.
That is when Mihika, her daughter, encouraged her to think of a serious business model. Excited with the possibilities, Anita went back to Kashipur and set up a medium scale production at home. She launched Maa's Pickles in February 2020.
Covid-19 forced many small businesses to shut shop as the country reeled from the pandemic. But e-commerce became a saviour for home-based businesses like Circa and Maa's by giving them a national reach with ease.
D'Cruz relied on social media groups to sell her products, and she dreams of expanding her business to the shelves soon. While Circa aims to bring flavours in their authentic form from every state, Maa's is working on highlighting the produce of Uttarakhand.
(Chandreyi Bandyopadhyay is a freelance writer and communications professional with a keen interest in food and travel.)
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