Nanee’s Flavours In Your Dubbas: Age Is Just A Number For These Grandmothers
If there’s anything about Indian culture and arts that appeals us, is that it has strong roots in our past. It grows with us, over time, creating a lasting impression on our future. We always have lessons to learn from and if we are patient, a mere glance into the past is all we need to do this wisely.
Heavily rooted in our traditions, the goal of Nanee's Flavours is to recreate ancient recipes, and give the customers a taste of an India now almost forgotten. Longing for a taste of special recipes and secret ingredients, Nanee’s Flavours hopes to recreate this in its own unique and exciting manner.
Much like a tree that’s ever-blooming, Nanee’s Flavours aims to be the strong rooted base to many Nanee's who wish to flourish.
Food plays an integral role in every household in India. At Nanee’s Flavours, the Nanee’s aim to use the most exquisite ingredients in their unique creations. With the best of India’s spices, nuts and Ayurvedic essentials, every product that is created here is rich and healthy. With a unique expertise that our Nanee’s have gathered over generations and using only the best of products to re-create them, ensuring their customers receive only the finest curation of homemade products.
Currently under the team are 4 Nanees - Mrs. Nayana, Mumbai (77 years), Mrs. Yamini, Mumbai (65 years), Mrs. Harshada Zaveri, Mumbai (65) and Mrs. Saroj Mehta, Jabalpur (70) who are selling their products from home and are now excited to take their products to a different level.
Initially packaged and sold from Yamini Mehta's home in South Mumbai during Diwali and the wedding season, packages of various sizes were often picked up by the staff from the homes of industrialists such as Ambanis, Goenkas and Bajajs. Nearly all of them would have mukhwas, mouth fresheners that the 65-year-old has been making using her mother's traditional recipes.
Two years ago, Jhaveri had quit her corporate job to mull over doing something more gratifying when she first thought of partnering with Yamini, her mother-in-law Nayana's sister. Noticing the constant stream of pick-ups for Yamini and Nayanaben's specialities, Jhaveri felt that so much more could be done with their unique recipes. Given their loyal clientele and added to that, the fact that her mother and nani too had been selling homemade knick-knacks for years, Jhaveri realised that a home-grown brand of digestives, syrups and accompaniments would do them good.
She spent months understanding consumer tastes, connecting with distributors and visiting wholesale markets to source dozens of ingredients. She thereafter coaxed Yaminiben to enter into a partnership with her.
The first few offerings from brand Nanee's Flavours were some of Nayana and Yamini's bestsellers, Surti jeeralu and crunchy mukhwas. Their production, however, needed to be amped up by hundreds of kilos. Jhaveri soon realised that there was no room anymore to misjudge on cooking times or ingredient quantities.
The quantities and procedures noted by her mother in an old recipe book has served as gospel. Sadgunaben, Nayana and Yamini's mother, who made quite a name for herself with her industrious ways, has left behind 135 recipes in the book, of which Jhaveri has only marketed 13 so far.
The Beginning Of The Journey
After spending more than a lifetime in a corporate role, Bhavi Jhaveri decided it was time to take and make more out of her life. The inception of Nanee’s Flavours was after she realised, that post lunch, a lot of her colleagues would walk up to her and ask her for “nanee’s mukhwaas” – her grandmother’s mix of mouth freshener that was always in a small box with her.
Bhavi soon decided it was time to take this home-made passion and turn it into a venture. Today, with the help of enthusiastic Nanee's and traditional (and some forgotten) recipes that have been passed down through time, Nanee’s Flavours has a healthy variety of homespun delicacies ranging from mouth fresheners, to spices and even joint relief oils and is only set to flourish.
The growth of Nanee’s Flavours is collective, Bhavi, the strong centered bark hopes that she can spread out and reach as many Nanee’s as she can, and to help them achieve their dream and save this dying art of home-made curated products.
