From teaching to snack-making |18 April 2011

Looking around for possibilities, Mrs Mangala Raja then realised there were practically no Indian snacks available locally. Already a very good cook, she decided that for the sake of the local Indian community as well as a business avenue, she could try to venture into making Indian snacks.

Speaking to Seychelles Nation over the weekend, Mrs Raja described how she teamed up with partner Bharathi Naidoo and started the St Louis-based Om Food Industries.

“As is usually the case with most businesses, it was slow at first, but eventually started picking up,” she said.
“We started with only two or three varieties at first and today are the proud manufacturers of eight types of Indian snacks.”

Mrs Naidoo said they did encounter difficulties when starting due to lack of foreign exchange available, which they needed to import some of the raw materials, such as nuts and spices.

Om Food Industries makes a variety of Indian snacks, such as peanut and onion bakoda, omapodi, ribbon, karasev, muruku, thattai and bread and banana chips.

The most popular product locally is the mixture, also known locally as “Ti Mimi”, which comes in both plain and mixed packets, the latter being the most loved.

The company also makes ten varieties of Indian sweets, which before then could not be found locally unless imported.

Types of sweets include laddu, golabjamun, milk sweets, jangiri, mysurpak and halwa. These are especially very popular during the Hindu Diwali festival, when the Hindu community place large orders.

On the local scene, Om Food Industries sells and delivers its products wholesale from order to shops and hotels all over Mahe, and also to Praslin and La Digue, and is very proactive in seeking out newly opened shops for business deals with.

The owners say the company’s products have been largely appreciated locally and friends who have visited them have taken their products home to their families in countries as far away as Italy, Australia, United States, India and France.

“We usually approach the new shops with a batch made up of a variety of our products and before long, the shopkeeper calls and says he has run out and needs to place another larger order,” Mrs Naidoo said with a satisfied smile.

Other success stories include the national airline Air Seychelles buying and serving the company’s snacks on board the first flight to Chennai, India last year and for three consecutive weeks after that.

“To maintain taste and also good health we use only sunflower oil, and only once for each batch of snack prepared,” said Mrs Naidoo.

The company has now ventured into making Indian food, but on order only. Mouth watering dishes for those who enjoy such food can be made available for parties or other events from 10 to 1000 people, where Om Food Industries is ready to provide the likes of chicken or mutton biriyani, chapatti or poori with vegetable or chicken kurma, and other South or North Indian varieties.

“On a roll now, we are even starting to make Chinese food and we already have a demand for it,” said the owners.
A point the owners were very particular about, however, was the need for the government to support local industries more.

“With the opening up of the market we understand the need to have imported snacks from overseas but in most, if not all cases, those products are pumped full of preservative because it is not known when they will be consumed and they are usually very low in quantity per packet,” said Mrs Raja.

“Our products are made fresh, have absolutely no preservatives and are usually sold within a week and whatever is not sold, we take back from the shop shelves.”

The owners concluded that although imported snacks entering the market somewhat damped business, they are doing well and said the current economy is conducive enough for doing business.

By Ivan Hollanda