Here are five women who run a small Diwali business from home

Diwali is about three things -- decorating the house with lots of lamps, diyas, lights; feasting on sweets and snacks, and gifts. 

Rarely anyone will argue that the best part about Diwali is decorating the house, gorging on a variety of snacks and sweets, and receiving all those gifts -- from the family, friends, and even your office.

Come Diwali, and people go to great lengths, first, with India's version of Spring cleaning, i.e. Diwali cleaning, and then shopping for decorative items to adorn the house. This usually includes diyas, lamps, torans, puja thalis, strings of colourful lights. 

There was a time when making at least seven to eight snacks at home, not counting at least two-three different kinds of sweets, was the ritual in every household. While some still make their own Diwali snacks and sweets at home, most rely on sweet marts today due to their busy schedule.

Here's a look at five women who run a small business out of their homes, catering to people's needs during Diwali. 

Khushboo Jain, Urban Haveli

Khushboo Jain (31) moved to Mumbai from Rajasthan in February 2014. In February this year, she started her own business called Urban Haveli, making and selling homemade decor items like traditional wall murals, show pieces, diyas, candle holders, torans, photo frames, and more, through a Facebook page. 

“I have been making these items as a hobby since 2003. Everything is so expensive in Mumbai, especially handicrafts. That's when I decided to convert my hobby into a business. 

“I wanted to remove the retail margins on products and sell them at a lower price to my customers,” she says.

In Rajasthan, Khushboo was a lecturer teaching Masters of Business Administration students. When the time came for her to get married, she decided to quit her job and move to Mumbai with her husband. “It was an arranged marriage for us, and I wanted to make time to get to know him, so I decided against taking up a job in Mumbai. It is then that I decided to start my own business from home,” she says. 

Urban Haveli was kickstarted at an exhibition during the Chembur Festival. She says the products got a tremendous response at the event. People were very happy with her art work, and people were especially happy with the price point, she said. 

While in Rajasthan, Khushboo trained in basic craft courses and even conducted workshops and exhibitions while still holding a full-time job. Over time, she learnt more, mixed and matched various art forms and came up with new designs and products. 

Since the first exhibition, there has been no looking back for Khushboo For now, she gets orders through her Facebook page, while her website is still under construction. She says she may list her products on e-commerce websites, but that is not a part of the immediate plan. “E-commerce websites have their own margins. My main aim is to keep the price low, so that my customers can buy the product for what it's actually worth.”

What's interesting is that both, Khushboo and her husband Akshat personally go to deliver orders to their customers. “We want to get first hand feedback for the products, and this gives us a chance to interact with customers personally,” Khushboo says. 

My husband and I run everything from our one bedroom, kitchen flat in Mumbai, she says.

Khushboo also sends orders across India via courier services. So far, she has sent shipments to Ludhiana, Amritsar, Indore, Jaipur, Udaipur and Kota, apart from Mumbai. 

When there's something you like, you find a way to do it, she says. What's the best part of doing this? “I'm not working for livelihood,” she says. “I'm following my dream, and I have all the support from my husband and family."

This Diwali, Khushboo says, people are looking to buy torans, shubh labh trays, candles, fancy handmade diyas, small wall murals. Basically, people are picking up small to medium-sized giftable items, she says. 

Sunayana Gupte – Ruchira

Diwali is an especially busy time in the Gupte household. Sunayana Gupte (51) specialises in Diwali sweets and makes treats like puranpoli, methi ladoo, rava ladoo, bhakharwadi, and other Diwali snacks and sweets. A housewife living in Thane, she has been running a tiffin service from her home for the last twenty years. 

Ruchira, her venture, took form when she first moved from Vadodara in Gujarat to Mumbai after her wedding. While Sunayana worked as a receptionist at a doctor's clinic in Vadodara, she wasn't allowed to work after marriage, she says.

Gupte mused about the humble beginning of Ruchira. She says a neighbour used to buy sweets and snacks from huge shops to give it to other people. That's when she stepped in and offered to make the snacks at home on a trial basis. 

“Everyone loved what I cooked,” she says, “and slowly but steadily, I started running a business from home. 

“I love cooking and feeding people,” Sunayana says. And it just helps that everyone in the family helps out, she added. 

With Ruchira, Sunayana usually asks people living close to her home in Thane to pick up the parcel once it's ready, while her two sons, and daughter-in-law deliver the packages to persons close to their respective offices.

 Someday she hopes to send her Diwali snacks to other countries, especially to Indians living abroad. 

This Diwali, she says people have been flocking to place orders for karanji and chakli.

Aishwarya Lahiri - Khanna - Oh fudge!

Aishwarya, a media professional, has been cooking for quite some time. 

While it was all about fancy cooking, cookies, cakes, and jams before she got married, after marriage, it’s the dal chawal and matar paneer after a long day at work that comes to the rescue, she says. 

Lahiri has been running a food blog, Aishwarya Eats since 2010, often updating it with extensive interesting recipes. Some of them that stood out at first glance were the Coffee Baileys ice cream, no-bake eggless fudge and biscuit freezer cake, a cinnamon clove chunky apple jam, and lots more. 

It was quite recently that Aishwarya decided to foray into chocolates. She says she’s been baking for quite some time, and started experimenting with chocolates some time back. It was then that she decided to do something at a very basic, beginner level out of it. That's when Oh Fudge! was born. Starting only a few days before Diwali this year, she’s already sent out about 40 to 50 boxes to friends, family and corporate houses, which is about 450 pieces of artisan homemade chocolates. 

Her Diwali hamper consisted of bourbon-filled dark chocolates, coffee-filled dark chocolates, hazelnuts chocolates, fruit and nut chocolates, and peanut butter cups. She’s also made some jam filled chocolates, mint and orange chocolates; the list goes on. 

While currently Aishwarya is doing it at only a part time level, she says she would want to do it full time some day for sure. But as of now, there are no plans in place. 

“Cooking is a hobby. It is my relaxation, with the kind of lifestyle that we lead, cooking is what takes me through it,” she says.

Currently, she has priced the chocolates at an introductory Rs 15-20 per piece, depending on the filling, while the bourbon-filled chocolates, like a Jim Beam chocolate, costs something around Rs 20-22 per piece. 

Going ahead, she plans to add jams to the mix, but “there are no plans of that currently”.

So far, the response has been quite good; people especially love the hazelnut chocolates, Jim Beam-filled chocolates and coffee chocolates. All the feedback has been quite positive, and it is definitely an encouragement, Aishwarya says.

Jigna Shah

Jigna Shah (45) takes after her mother when it comes to creativity. She always wanted to do something on her own, but being in a joint family, she never got the time to do it. 

“But after my son finished his SSC exams, I was free. I didn’t know how to make many things, so I took basic classes to learn toran making, diyas, decorative serving trays.”

Shah says she could make home decorations, but thought it was important to get the basics right to get the professional touch. 

Finally, she got better at making traditional home decorations and decided to do it professionally. 

But being in a joint family, there was always something to do, someone to look after, Shah says. “My first priority was my home. I would finish all the house work by 1 pm, and instead of sleeping or watching tv till 5 pm, I decided to use that time constructively.

Three years back, Shah put up an exhibition along with her niece. A year later, she set up the business, running it from home. She now takes orders for torans, dry fruit trays, serving trays, salt pepper trays, and so on. 

She soon started getting orders, first from her family and friends, and later from people in her building. “People place the order, and so far, they come and pick it up from my home.”

This year, she has already managed to sell off all her Diwali inventory.

Shweta Bhagat

Shweta Bhagat (22), a post graduate mass communications student at Thadomal Shahani centre for Management in Bandra, loves making chocolates. 

It all started with curiosity for Bhagat. She was inquisitive about how chocolates are made, and started slowly teaching herself the art, often looking up the recipes on Google, and trying them on her family, relatives and friends. 

Soon she became pretty good at it, she says, and decided to convert it into a small business when she was 18. “If I can benefit out of something that I love doing, then why not,” she says.

Bhagat makes assorted chocolates, including dark chocolates, dry fruits chocolates, vanilla, various flavours, for weddings, corporates, and mainly for her friends and family. “Rather than buying something from the market, I think making about 500 assorted chocolates as a wedding gift is so much better.” 

She also takes suggestions from customers about new flavours, and makes them accordingly. “I once made a box of layered chocolates for a birthday. It had a layer of vanilla, crunchy dark chocolate and different toppings.” 

“There are days I have made 1,000 chocolates in a day because of an urgent order,” says Bhagat. 

But she doesn’t want to convert it into a full fledged business.  “I’m only doing it for the pocket money. I also take tuition for students of up to class 12th. With making chocolates and the tuitions, I try and help contribute to the family as much as I can.”

Because of this, Bhagat says that she sells her chocolates at a per piece price insteam of per kilogram as big businesses would do. “My input cost for a box of 50 chocolates is about Rs 100, which includes a chocolate slab worth Rs 90 (makes 50 chocolates) and Rs 10 worth of decorative paper for the box. I sell the chocolates at Rs 250.”

Bhagat relies on word of mouth, and her extensive friends list — she says she’s very social — to get orders. She spreads the word through WhatsApp, on Facebook, and so on. She gives out small hampers to her friends, family, people in the building, and they get back to her with orders if they like the chocolates, she says. 

Bhagat wants to go around schools and set up stalls for chocolates, as she thinks that it will really do the trick, but she hasn’t gotten down to it yet. 

This season, Bhagat has already made about 1,000 chocolates. People usually love dry fruits chocolates, but go in for dark chocolates, she says, as they are cheaper.