The taste of Tradition | Leena Joshi

Leena Joshi
Malini Gruha Udyog (MGU)

‘Since almost 13 years I am in this business of food manufacturing. This was a home grown business initiated by my mother-in-law who used to manufacture homemade spices. But unfortunately due to her demise the business shut down for a while.’ tells Leena Joshi, a dedicated housewife turned businesswoman and proprietor of Malini Gruha Udyog. The recipe of Goda Masala was taught to Leena by her mother-in-law. She started her business with this Goda Masala that has a long traditional significance in maharashtrian cuisine. Hence she dedicated the business to her late mother-in-law, named Malini.

Actually it started with a sudden coincidence. Leena was preparing this Goda Masala for her daily use and one of her friend came to see her. The friend was so carried with the fragrance, that she took a small amount of this Goda Masala for herself. After tasting the Goda Masala, this friend asked Leena to start a business out of it. Today Leena manufactures various spices, chutneys and instant mixes.

This taste was appreciated at large by all the customers. Leena also got trained by the Maharashtra Center for Entrepreneurship Development (MCED) where she took a course in manufacturing of spices and entrepreneurship. This helped her improve herself for creating a business with a proper mindset.

With the spices business growing, few inquiries about chutneys were raised. This initiated the new vertical of chutneys. Leena purchased a GharGhanti with the profit she had made out of the business.Then she got training for manufacturing instant mixes. With this GharGhanti she started manufacturing instant mixes as well.

Her daughter was studying in Australia at that time and she used to send small packets of instant mixes for her and her friends. This was proved very useful for them. With this feedback Leena dived into the instant mixes business and it is a well established entity now.

Apart from all this, Leena has a master’s degree in Hindi Literature and she has served as a teacher in a school. She got into this at first because of her passion for cooking. But as she acquired knowledge in the food business from her mother-in-law, she gained her confidence. At the same time this also enabled her to become competent in this strenuous and highly competitive business.

There are many well established brands in the spices market. But this market is based on only one ingredient and that is Taste. She is well aware that she cannot compete with these big players. She believes that if you provide nice taste consistently to your customers, they will be loyal to you. With this phenomenon she has grown up to 10 thousand customers. This journey was not so easy.

When Leena tried to expand this MGU brand, she faced a lot of challenges. Initially the space at her home was enough but as the business grew it demanded a separate space which needed funds. She identified a space and approached a bank. As she had passed 50 years of age, the bank rejected her loan proposal. At this point her husband came to rescue her. He borrowed a mortgage loan of their residential property and stood strong behind her. She would like to take this chance to thank her better half from her heart.

She remembers one difficult experience she had while building her business. MGU had created new designer boxes for spices and displayed them in various stores. A storeowner from one store called within 2 weeks and asked to take the spice boxes back. As she was a Marathi lady, Leena begged her to keep these boxes for a few more days but the lady very rudely denied and Leena lost a lot of potential customers.

At the same time a positive experience came from a grandmother, which was heart touching and stood as mark of quality for MGU. This grandmother was bed ridden and was on liquid diet. Her daughter-in-law purchased a packet of spices from an exhibition. She prepared a traditional recipe, Aamti, on the festival of Holi. After tasting it, the grandmother called up Leena and told her, “This reminds me the taste of my mother’s recipe.”

MGU has a range of various spices in its basket. Last year MGU has launched two unique products viz; multigrain atta and diabatic care atta.

Consistency in taste, cleanliness and straight business are the three ingredients of her Business Mantra. This three tier system is the only thing behind the success of MGU. If you are loyal to your product and giving 100 percent of you, then you can potentially get maximum results as a business. This journey of Leena, MGU and her spices has underlined this fact categorically.

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