How Anju turned a personal food experiment into a snack brand expanding to 41 retail stores

A 20-year corporate career, an events business and eight marathons may not seem like the usual starting points for a food entrepreneur.

But Anju Kalhan's journey to building a healthy snacking brand has taken an unconventional route.

A graduate in Business Economics from the University of Delhi, Anju spent two decades working in corporate and industry organisations.

She served as a Senior Economist at ASSOCHAM and Deputy Director at the Hotel Association of India, where she also worked with SSH Rehman, former Managing Director of ITC Hotels.

She eventually left her corporate career to start an events company, organising FICCI events and corporate workshops. Alongside her professional commitments, she pursued fitness, completed eight marathons and trained as a yoga professional and fitness coach.

But it was a personal health experience that eventually led her towards the food business.

Today, she is the founder of Bliss by Anju, a food brand making plant-based snacks without added oil, ghee, dairy or refined ingredients.

What began with experiments in her home kitchen has grown into an operation with an in-house manufacturing facility and a retail presence across 41 stores in India.

A personal journey sparks a business idea

Anju says she had lived with high blood pressure for nearly 30 years, along with severe migraines and sinusitis. Health complications within her family, including diabetes and high blood pressure among her parents, also made her reconsider their everyday food habits.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, she began exploring plant-based whole-food diets, learning from coaches and studying the role of food in health.

She gradually removed ghee, cooking oil and highly processed packaged foods from her kitchen. According to Anju, she noticed significant improvements in her blood pressure and migraines within 90 days. Her mother, who was over 80, also experienced improvements in her diabetes and blood pressure after changing her diet, she says.

The experience encouraged Anju to look beyond her household and examine what was available in the market.

She visited organic stores, large retail outlets and shops selling artisanal products to find snacks that aligned with her new food choices. However, she found that many products marketed as healthy still contained palm oil or other added oils.

This exposed a gap she wanted to address.

"The healthy food is not tasty, and the tasty food is not healthy," was how Anju described the problem she encountered.

She decided to create snacks that could offer both. Rather than depend on oil and ghee for flavour, she began experimenting with Indian spices, nuts and seeds.

The company's earlier journey began with home-kitchen experiments in 2018-19, followed by selling at farmers' markets in 2019-20. As her understanding of whole-food eating evolved, she reworked the product range in 2023-24 to remove ghee and added oils.

From kitchen experiments to an in-house factory

Building a food business without a background in professional cooking or bakery operations meant learning several things along the way.

Anju says she is neither a trained chef nor a nutritionist. Instead, she approached product development through research, experimentation and a willingness to learn.

The brand's philosophy is built around plant-based whole foods and familiar ingredients. Its range includes granolas made with nuts and seeds, cookies prepared using chickpea flour, sattu and almonds, biscotti, sweets and savoury snacks such as matthi.

One of its products, tangy dates, uses dates, spices and lemon, offering an alternative to conventional packaged aam papad.

For Anju, spices are central to making the products flavourful without added fats. Cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg, she explains, can bring aroma and flavour to snacks without relying on oil or ghee.

The company also pays attention to how its ingredients are prepared. Anju says nuts and seeds are washed, soaked and dried before being used in its products.

What started in her kitchen has now moved into manufacturing. The company operates an in-house factory in Othala, where it makes its products.

Its approach is to cover different snacking occasions throughout the day, from morning granola to cookies with tea, biscotti with coffee and savoury snacks in the evening.

Taking the brand to more consumers

Bliss by Anju has expanded its distribution to 41 stores across India and is also available on Amazon and Blinkit.

The company has entered its third year of operations in its current phase of growth, according to Anju. It remains bootstrapped, and she says she is looking for investment to support the next stage of the business.

Building awareness remains one of the challenges. As a relatively small brand, Anju says she cannot afford large celebrity endorsements or extensive marketing campaigns. She is looking to reach consumers by communicating the thinking behind the products and the ingredients used to make them.

The brand's products can also be relatively expensive because of their use of nuts, seeds and other whole-food ingredients. Anju believes consumers should understand food labels and make informed choices about what they eat.

Her efforts extend beyond selling packaged snacks.

Through her association with the SHARAN community, she participates in cooking demonstrations and classes that teach people how to prepare food without oil and ghee. Many of these sessions are free or offered at a nominal charge.

She is also careful about how she positions her products. Anju says the snacks are not intended to replace fresh meals. Instead, they are meant for people who need convenient options while travelling, working in offices or packing food for children.

At 60, Anju is building a food business around an idea that emerged from her own experiences. Having moved from a corporate career to entrepreneurship and then into food manufacturing, she is now looking for investment and opportunities to expand Bliss by Anju.

For women considering entrepreneurship, her advice is simple: pursue the idea, even when the circumstances are not perfect. As she puts it, one should not be afraid of taking the plunge. Something worthwhile can emerge from the effort.