The Power of Her

‘The Perfect Voice’ celebrates strong, trailblazers in this series with stories of women who brave battles every day that serve as an inspiration to the next generation. We have daughters fulfilling their parent’s dreams, victims of domestic abuse rebuilding their lives and professionals dealing with the famous ‘mom guilt’.

Part - 5

A Recipe for Success

Hemangi Nakwe, Mumbai

Her childhood passion for food and cooking helped Hemangi Nakwe, 50, tide over a financial crisis that hit the family in June 2020. Her husband, who was working as a Photo Editor with an English daily newspaper, lost his job, almost overnight. “More than 350 people were laid off and the Mumbai bureau was shut down,” says Nakwe. The looming fear of managing the household, hit the couple. “We had a home loan and the amount was fairly large so that worried us all the more. Sitting idle and worrying wasn’t an option. I had to do something to run my home,” she says.

Nakwe turned to what she knew best—cooking. While growing up with two sisters, their mother made them learn the basics of cooking. “At the age of seven years, I could knead dough; then my mother taught me how to make puris and then moved on to learn how to make perfectly round rotis,” she says. Nakwe, who grew up in Ambernath, studied commerce and then home science where she took up cookery as her subject. Proper and rigorous training at home and in college, instilled in her the skills to cook for people beyond her family. “I loved watching my mother and my aunt cook and learnt the intricacies of cooking from them and subsequently from my mother-in-law,” she says.

Barely a month after her husband lost his job, the couple decided to start cooking for people. It helped that those were times when people were functioning without house-helpers and cooks and restaurants were closed. They started testing their food on friends and acquaintances and sought feedback. Nakwe’s husband was in-charge of cleaning, washing and chopping the vegetables. He’d clean disposable plastic containers thoroughly before filling them with food. With this, Hemas Veg Rasoi was born from their home in Mumbai’s Matunga.

The feedback was encouraging and orders started pouring in. Nakwe went on to launch weekly menus with options of meal subscriptions on a daily basis. “Most of my clients were doctors, working professionals who had no time to cook or elderly people living without help,” she says. Even today, a large chunk of her clients includes the elderly, people living alone or busy corporate professionals. Nakwe, however, keeps the numbers low. “I supply a maximum of 35 meals in a day because I don’t want to compromise on the quality or taste,” she says. Her customers are spread across the city from Andheri to Colaba and her delivery people dispatch the meals.

Just when the business was picking up, Nakwe’s husband had a severe attack of convulsions in November 2020. He fell to the ground with immense force, shattering his shoulder bone. “The doctors said that this was caused by stress. Even though we were running this business, he was under immense stress,” she says. Nakwe nursed him back to health but the recovery took over a year, leaving him without the option of seeking another job. They finally decided to run their business together even as her husband now works with an NGO.

Running a cloud kitchen from home isn’t an easy task. A typical day for Nakwe begins at 6 AM and she finishes cooking lunch by 11.30 AM after which it’s dispatched. At times, she has bulk or party orders or snacks and meals for the evening. She even takes orders for certain special items like puran poli. “My USP is that I customise meals. I remember to not send anything hard or spicy for elderly customers or I replace a sweet with savoury for diabetics,” she says.

Come April, Nakwe will get busy making pickles and masalas for the year ahead, along with her mother and sister. “I don’t use any artificial colours and preservatives in my food,” she says. What began as a desperate attempt to keep the home running has transformed into a successful business that Nakwe and her husband enjoy running. “Now I work without pressure,” she says.