We all have one thing common which is enjoying grandmother’s cooking. For me, it is nani’s pulao, the taste which many in my family tried to replicate but failed. For Shelley Subawalla, her grandmother’s favourite memory is that of biryani and Parsi-style kadhi-chawal.
When Shelley got married, she was unable to cook. She used to call her grandmother regularly for the instructions to cook any particular dish. Ultimately, this resulted in grandmother Zarin giving away her delicious recipes of spice mixes to her granddaughter.
Co-existence of past and present
In order to protect the existing legacy of Parsi families in our country, Shelley launched Zarin’s Secrets, in 2015. Right now, she has 25 authentic variety of Parsi spice mixes along with some other contributions from some other friends and family members who were willing to share their legacy with the entire world.
Some of the products offered by her are dhansak masala (which is somewhat same as garam masala), dhana jiru, Parsi khara masala and vasanu. Among all the varities offered, dhansak is the most popular.
Lots of sweet memories from the past
Since the launch of Zarin’s Secrets, some other community members, and few friends of Parsi community, came forward to offer their own family recipes. Indira is one such person, a resident of Gurugram, who did provide a repository of her delicious pickle recipes.
As Indira says, her mother and grandmother were great in cooking mutton pulao along with mouth-watering pickles like nimbu-khajur. She did share the recipes for those pickles with Shelley’s venture along with the marchu, and a green curry masala. Incidentally, Indira was also the one who pushed Shelley to pursue this dream. Right now, Zarin’s Secrets have spices which are almost 100 years old. Approximately five families have shared their legacy with this venture.
This entire business is one of a kind family business, and Shelley has never given funding too much thought. Her son helped her with designing the first label for the company, and all the creative work is being taken care of by her cousin. Shelley has also employed a part-time helper, but more or less she takes care of the entire business on her own. She also has a strict rule of not making more than 5-6 kilos of masalas a day in order to maintain quality standards. She has been able to send her products to different parts of the world.
Her product popularity and orders mainly depend on social media like Instagram and Facebook, along with word-of-mouth marketing. Apparently, along with this venture, she has also started Frenny by Zarin’s Secrets, which she did during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Under this venture, she offers spices together with mixes from all over the country. Some of the well-known names are the goda masala and kolhapuri masala from Maharashtra.
Aim to keep going
In the beginning, it was difficult for her to do business on her own as there are still some gender related issues in our country. But with time, situation has improved and now she is able to do business on her own. One another important aspect was also to maintain her personal and professional life. But she did well in handling that too.
As more and more strict rules were imposed by the government during the pandemic, her business was also affected like many others in the country. But as the situation started to ease up a bit then demands for her products increased. All this was a result of people being confined to one corner of their house and willing to improve in some art related skills.
Cost of her products have also been increasing along with that of raw materials. The products are being offered in different price range starting with pickle jars from Rs 300 to Rs 900, depending on the quantity, and for the spices it starts from Rs 250 and goes up to Rs 400. But in spite of all this her business is doing well as orders are being repeated regularly. Her yearly revenue has also increased to Rs 20 lakhs per annum which is also good when compared to the efforts in her business.
Shelley says she is constantly trying to improve on business terms and also introduce new products from time to time which ultimately is helping her in keeping her family roots alive. Starting with mere 4 products, she now has a catalog of 60 products with which she is constantly trying to reach a wider audience all over the globe.
By-
Raunak Jha
