Indian-American Women Sweetening up the Halwais Businesses

By siliconindia | Wednesday, 18 December 2019, 06:17 Hrs

Indian-American women who were passionate for cooking turned their passion into successful startups. Now they are popularly known as confectioner.

FREMONT, CA: Indian-American women are changing the era by using her rolling pan and cooking talent into money-making startups. Most of the time, women are just considered as housewives, the home-cooks, and kitchen-bound, but now some women are changing the concept of people by bringing startups.

A New York-based Michelin star chef Surbhi Sahni who has also worked alongside her husband, the Michelin chef Hemant Mathur, has reached great heights. Surbhi Sahni grew up in Delhi; her mother was a teacher, so most sweets were bought at the local halwai because her mother was busy with her work, and making sweets is a long-enduring process. Her sweet-making process is done over the years of trial and error. She took several years to perfect each sweet ensuring the taste, balance, and presentation of each piece wows the receiver. She always had the entrepreneurial itch to cook. She started Bittersweet NYC, which had pop-up stores during Diwali, bringing a very modern concept to an age-old traditional festival.

For all the occasions, either Christmas or Thanksgiving, she prepares new theme-centric sweets. Recently, she launched TagmoTreats, which covers east, west, and fusion to cover the entire sweet scape for all the holidays. She is teaching immigrant women to cook and to enter the restaurant business.

Ajmera was born in Jaipur and is not a professional halwai; she learned her basic cooking from her mother, who is an outstanding cook. Her inborn or natural talent has made her in demand, getting people hooked. Earlier she used to make sweets to present as gifts to her friends and family, but now she gets orders to set up big dessert tables for destination weddings and gala dinners.

Another young woman who started out on the sweets journey is Simran Rajani of New Jersey, she is from the famous biscuit manufacturers named JB Mangharam. She was born in Bangalore in a family of lifelong confectioners. After marriage due to an interest in baking and desserts, she rented a commercial kitchen and started a small business specializing in cakes. In a busy schedule with young children, she desired to get daily meals with preservative-free options, but she failed to find them in the store. So she decided to make preservative-free quick fixes for daily meals & called the company E-ZY-FOODS. Fresh paneer, dahi vada, idli mix, dosa mix, rasmalai, kulfi are some of the items made by her company.

She has also launched an app named E-ZY-FOODS -Taste of your Neighborhood, for small food businesses, it is a platform where anyone can buy or sell food/ food products/ vegetables/ baked goodies. The main aim of this app is to encourage small businesses.