Meet the SHEROES - Alpana Agarwal

Image Source: Con Affetto

Let's start the week with somethign delicious!

Today we speak to Alpana Agarwal who founded Con Affetto , a unique venture that blends the beauty of flowers with the delicious taste of baked goodies into one, with the aim of turning them into wonderful gifts. So the next time you want to order a bouquet of edible flowers to gift someone, you know where to book!

What field of work are you in? 

At Con Affetto (which is Italian for “with affection”),we create fresh alternatives to traditional flowers with something yummier than roses or tulips and with augmented value proposition to help gift meaningfully. We craft edible bouquets from our baked desserts like cookies, cup cakes, cake truffles, pretzels et al. We combine two popular gifts - flowers and cakes/cookies into a more meaningful concept by capturing the elegance of flowers and deliciousness of our baked goodies.

Why enter this arena of work?

Picking the right gift for someone is never easy, especially in a country like ours where we have a grand list of festivals and gifting occasions. One of the handiest gifts is flowers! But flowers wither and fade, they offer no utility. Moreover, a regular flower bouquet these days on an average costs nothing less than Rs500-600 for any durability and utility. This value-for-money thought crosses a lot of people’s minds when ordering flowers.

Having faced this problem personally time and again; since I am a baker by hobby and now profession, I decided to combine the beauty of flowers and deliciousness of desserts to capture the best of both worlds. I discussed the idea with my sister and we both decided to give this a shot.  Well, ideas don’t work alone and it’s difficult to replace nature!!  It took us umpteen numbers of experiments and trials to create our blooming range of edible gifts.

Our edible blooms are for people who look not only for beauty but also for good value proposition.They make a unique, tasty and thoughtful gift. Currently, we offer 20 bouquet options and also do personalized and themed bespoke boxes/hampers/baskets (such as a pack of logo cookies for corporates). Our customer can select from our 5 flavor options across all categories (cupcakes, cake truffle and cookies) and get a personalized theme based arrangement crafted.

What are the top 3 things you learn from being an entrepreneur?

1. Love what you do and have fun doing it

2. Never look back. 

3. Be Stubborn and Flexible – Stubborn on your vision but if something isn’t working, be flexible to drop it and focus on what’s working.

The essence of Con Affetto is our willingness to play around and create new things. We are constantly inspired by new ideas, which we strive to put into place. If something isn’t quite working we learn from that experience and move forward.

What are your future career / professional dreams and goals?

Our core product is baked goodies but our potential product is a premium gift with higher value proposition as compared to regular flowers. We would like to be positioned as a premium edible gifting company, offering a wide range of handpicked choices.