Run completely by underprivileged women, Didi’s Foods, provides meals to professionals around the city of Lucknow
It is 9 a m and there is frantic activity inside a corner house in the Gomti Nagar area of Lucknow. A bunch of women ranging from their mid twenties to early forties all dressed in yellow and maroon salwar kameez sporting a bandana on their heads are busy chopping, cooking and packing food into large tiffin carriers. Meanwhile, some are readying the van into which these tiffin boxes are piled for delivery all around the city. It is hard to ignore the fact that the driver of this van is also a woman — similarly clad.
All of these women come from poor financial and social backgrounds, and work for a venture called Didi’s Foods — the name comes from the fact that it is mainly run by women. Didi’s Foods started out as a canteen in a school two years ago. It later started providing a meal delivery service to students and professionals around the city.
Today Didi’s Foods, which is registered as part of the society called Sisters in Solidarity, has under its belt clientèle like Taj Hotel, HDFC Bank, Idea Cellular, MTS, Videocon, Spencer’s Retail and Tata Consultancy. Didi’s Foods runs its cafeteria at several of these places and provides evening snacks for the employees under a year-long contract.
Didi’s Foods is the brainchild of Urvashi Sahni, president of Study Hall Education Foundation. Sahni first started with a school for underprivileged girls called Prerna. The mothers of these girls were brought together by Sahni to start an NGO to empower women and create sustainable means of employment using skills that come naturally to them. Sheela, though, is an exception to this. Sheela, used to work earlier as a domestic help joined the kitchen brigade of Didi’s. However, after a few days she took a three-week driving course and became the delivery woman for Didi’s Foods.
“I get a lot of attention wherever I go since drivers are usually men. But I don’t care as this has given me the ability to take care of my children,” said Sheela the sole breadwinner of her family.
For the rest of the women, too, there have been a lot of cookery lessons provided by their Chief Coordinator Veena Anand, who left her teaching job to fully devote her time to Didi’s Foods. Apart from the usual Indian palette, the women here can make pickles, pizzas, noodles, muffins and a variety of chocolates — from date confectionary to red chilly chocolates. “The learning has come after some trial and error. It is my job to taste the food every morning before it goes out for delivery. Taste and hygiene are our two USPs,” Anand said.
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Now Didi’s Foods has its Head Chef in Kalavati. One of the first women to join the NGO, Kalavati worked earlier as a help in a school with barely enough money to provide for her children and ailing husband. Today, she earns Rs 8,000 a month. “I like it here, this place has given me an identity and independence. All of us come from poor families, most have abusive husbands who get drunk and beat up their wives. Here we are getting a chance to step out of our homes and make our own living,” she said.
Didi’s venture has managed to grow at a rapid pace. Last year it had sales worth Rs 45 lakh and it is expected to reach Rs 75 lakh by March 2011. Sahni provided the seed money to start Didi’s Foods herself, later the venture raised a bank loan of Rs 4 lakh.
“We tapped the corporate market simply by word of mouth. It really helped us grow since we don’t have funds for any marketing,” said Anand.
Most of the profit goes to the Prerna School and with what is left Didi’s floated two more entities last year — Didi’s Creations and Didi’s Parlour. The latter is being run by an instructor who is training women to be beauticians. The “Creation” project has been inspired by Fab India model and wants to grow into organised retail in future. “Currently we make uniforms, handicraft and home décor items, among other things. These are early days but it has the potential to grow into something big,” said Sahni.
“We have been managing our finances using horse sense, seeing where we can cut costs since we don’t have any professional knowledge of how to run a business,” said Sahni.
The functioning of Didi’s Foods is such that everyone gets to be part of the decision- making process. Whenever there is a new order, the whole team decides whether to take it or not. This has created a sense of ownership. “We have a very limited workforce and accepting additional orders simply means putting in more working hours. But the women here are so spirited that we have never had to turn an order down because of our limitations,” Anand added.
The latest in the kitty of Didi’s Foods is a proposal from the Cafe Coffee Day chain to sell its snacks in its local outlets. “If it goes well it can increase our presence nationally. We are all brainstorming on snacks that we can make for them,” Anand said excitedly.
For the women working in this organisation, it is the regular source of income that they value most. However, for their chief mentor, Sahni the idea is to make entrepreneurs out of these women and to take the idea of Didi’s Foods and Didi’s Creation to other cities as well.
“Initially the women here were extremely reticent and did not want to move out of the kitchen. As we started to set up cafeterias in corporate offices they had to step up and get rid of their inhibitions. Today they are very confident and I feel they can take on bigger roles and challenges,” asserted Sahni.
