Tapping The Food Opportunity

The eminent panel discussed the opportunities in the food and beverage sector and the challenges they face.

Shruti Gochhwal highly believes in the farm to fork model of business and expressed that each business has some or the other challenge in the process, “(For us), finding the right farmers to work with and then convincing them to follow our process was the biggest challenge”.

“With time and experience you learn a lot, my biggest challenges were with the team, being a woman and late night shifts,” said Manvi Chaudhary.

The Parsi foodchain owner, Anahita Dhondy, also shared the multiple challenges she faced “In the beginning, being young and a woman, people did not take my words seriously but now I can say that there is no disparity. But once you prove it to them, you cook in front of them and work equally hard, the mindset is changed eventually”. 

She added, “Also, I use to go to every table in the beginning to explain to people what the particular dish is, to make them more familiar with it.”

Further, Radhika Khandelwal shared the success mantra for multi-brand business, “The only way to succeed whilst running multiple different brands is to build a core team, and your business has to be a well-oiled machine where it can run without you”.

The panellist, speaking at the Women Entrepreneurship Summit & Awards 2019 held by BW Businessworld, included Anahita Dhondy, Chef Partner, SodaBottleOpenerWala, Apeksha Jain, Chief Confiturier & Founder, The Gourmet, Manvi Chaudhary, Director & Founder, Pier 38 & Dips By Jars, Radhika Khandelwal, Chef-Owner, Radish Hospitality, Sakshi Tulsian, Co-Founder, Posist, Shruti Gochhwal, Co-founder & Director, Zappfresh. The session was chaired by Yeshwanth Nag Mocherla, Founder, The ThickShake Factory.