Interview with Indu Sreeram, Founder, Recipes by Indu
Indu has been an entrepreneur in her own right for the past 8 years as she has been running an online boutique. However, this Shepreneur wanted to do more and founded ‘Recipes by Indu’. With the aim of providing healthy home cooked food, Indu is passionate about food and hopes to make ‘Recipes by Indu’ a household name in the healthy food industry! The She Connect caught up with her recently. Here’s her story!
What is the story behind ‘Recipes by Indu’? What was your inspiration?
My first Recipe was made for my daughter. After many trials I found the right balance of healthy ingredients that catered to my daughter’s taste. Over the next few months, I tweaked the recipe to enhance the flavours of the dish. This is how the trademark, ‘Green Mint biriyani’ came into being and with it the journey of ‘Recipes by Indu’ started.
What are some of the challenges you faced when you started out?
The initial challenge for me was getting quality ingredients on a consistent basis and also reliable help to prepare the dishes. So, I started by preparing the entire dishes by myself even when I had received my bulk order of 150 biriyanis.
Tell us your journey from when you started at home and you wanting to scale up.
Once the trade mark Green Mint Biriyani was perfected, I prepared the dish when my friends came over for dinner. So that’s the first time they tried the biriyani and all of them enjoyed it, especially the kids. My friends suggested that this is the dish that everyone would love to try and that I should think about giving it to more people. I decided to give it a go and initially told only my family and friends about this. I started by making a few biriyanis every Sunday and the response was very encouraging. After the initial few weeks, I had to stop taking orders as the volume was more than I could manage by myself. That is when I thought that it is the time to expand and to focus more on a healthy home kitchen concept.
How is ‘Recipes by Indu’ different from other food?
As I mentioned before, the concept is of healthy home cooked meals, so a lot of effort goes into choosing the right ingredients and at the same time there is no compromise on the taste. Unlike restaurants where you can go and order the food of your choice, we only take pre-booked orders so as to avoid food wastage as we cook only the required amount of food.
Why did u choose to start ‘Recipes by Indu’? What do you aim to achieve?
I always wanted to do something on my own and over the last 8 years I have been running my own online boutique called Ekaa Creations (ekaacreations.com) . During the lockdown, I sensed that there was a need for heathy home cooked food as the majority of population were working from their homes. That’s when I thought the time was right to launch ‘Recipes by Indu’ and my main aim is to bring out new and healthy recipes that every member in a family enjoys.
What, according to you, are the basics to start and sustain a business like this? Especially for Women.
The main thing to running your own business successfully is for you to have the passion to do it day in and day out. If you do not enjoy what you are doing, it will feel like a task. I enjoy creating new recipes and take it as a challenge to discover new tastes and flavours. Passion alone won’t do the trick; you also have to make a solid business plan and do ample market research. Nowadays, there is a lot of support for women entrepreneurs. If your basics is right, you will get the necessary support from various agencies for starting your own business. As women, we can take advantage of all those available recourses.
As independent as we women are, we all have our support system. Tell us about yours.
For every business to succeed, the initial support comes from your family and friends. In my case too, I have had immense support of my family when I told them I wanted to start ‘Recipes by Indu’. My friends also helped me spread the word and last but not the least my customers who have been regularly ordering my dishes have kept me motivated to go on and bring out new dishes.
What Next for ‘Recipes by Indu’?
The next immediate plan is to cater to a large number of customers by creating an entire range of healthy food recipes. After the initial phase, I would like to expand to other regions and make ‘Recipes by Indu’ a household name in the healthy food industry.
