As more people work, and snack, from home, online startups deliver traditional sweets and savouries to your doorstep
The Postcard
Kolhapuri bhadang, Ludhiana badam barfi or Cuttack barohmaja — when you crave a snack from your hometown, browse through The Postcard’s website and you are likely to find it.
Founded by two friends in 2015, Bangaluru-based The Postcard works with 400 manufacturers across India, and has 45 products from Tamil Nadu alone. Says Aashish Nichani, co-founder: “We identify local vendors, then our team upskills them, and ensures quality control.”
The founders travels across the country to discover new snacks. “That is how we came across the Kolhapuri bhadang, which is puffed rice tossed in chilli powder and infused with garlic, made by a vendor at Jaisinghpur,” says Aashish. “The pandemic has increased snacking habits. We get the highest orders from Delhi NCR and Mumbai, and interestingly it is South Indian food that moves fast in these regions. Chennai orders predominantly Gujarati or Rajasthani snacks.”
www.thepostcard.in
Thinpandangal
M Mariraj’s father M Marimuthu has supplied traditional savouries and sweets to stores in and around Kovilpatti for 38 years. Mariraj, while taking an IT job in Chennai, went a step further and collaborated with his friends Arun Sundar and G Karthikeyan to take orders during Deepavali since 2018..
“We launched thinpandangal.com in January 2020. We operate out of Virudhunagar and our speciality is karuppatti (palm jaggery) sweets and a wide range of murukkus,” says Mariraj. With manufacturing units at Kovilpatti and Virudhunagar, they ship across the country and abroad.
Dummy caption AJEETH KUMAR
“In our region, kadala mittai (peanut candy) is most popular: all the raw material is sourced from here. This area is well known for palm jaggery, so we offer karuppatti laddu, karuppati kajukatli, karuppati halwa...” he says, adding that they have also launched a range of biscuits made with unusual ingredients like gooseberry, banana stem and avarampoo. Bestsellers are panagkalkandu carrot halwa, red banana Mysorepak and garlic murukku.
www.thinpandangal.com
Mylapore Ganapathys
Chennai-based Ganapathy’s butter and ghee is gearing up to celebrate its 80th year in 2022, much to the delight of brothers S Saravanan and S Balaji. Stating how proud they are to carry forward the family legacy, Sarvanan says, “Though we have a store in Mylapore, Many customers have shifted online now.
Our freshly-made local snacks have drawn customers from Chennai for 30 years, and now we are supplying the country.” Balaji adds, “We make these snacks in Mylapore and West Mambalam. Our most popular items are seedai, butter murukku and kai murukku. We also have mini sweets (jangri, badusha and mysorepak). Our ‘nostalgia category’ includes kamara kattu, thaen mittai, pulippu mittai, seeraga mittai and elandhavadai.
www.mylaporeganapathys.com
Prakruti Varam
Thirty-year-old Praveen Kumar lives in his 20-acre farm at Kothur village, near Ambur, in a joint family of 22. The family has been actively involved in organic farming, inspired by his grandfather.
Praveen decided to focus on value-added food products from the farm and launched Prakruti Varam three years ago. “As my vision was to support the farming community in the region, we procure products from other farms as well. Two years ago, we decided to offer village style snacks.
Recipes are derived from my family and the community. All raw materials, including ghee and oil are from the farm. Most of the snacks are made using millets and jaggery,” he says. The portal has about 16 types of snacks, and a few sweet items such as paalkova, popped jowar laddu and gulab jamun. The bestsellers are bajra sweet thattai, ragi thattai and kadala urundai.
www.prakrutivaram.com
