Meet Five Women Who Turned Their Love For Pickles Into Profitable Businesses

What is the easiest way to elevate the taste of an everyday meal? Serve it with a pickle and you will feel at home. Here's a list of five pickle entrepreneurs who understood this emotion pretty well and turned their love for food and innovative recipes into a profitable homemade pickle business.

1. Usha Gupta

The 87-year-old started a pickle business, 'Pickled With Love' after losing her husband to COVID-19 in May 2021.  In an interview with SheThePeople.TV, she said, "I not just lost my life partner but also my best friend and companion. We’d been together for 6 decades–It was almost as if I didn’t know how to live without him. After being discharged, I’d have sleepless nights pondering over my loss and the loss of thousands of lives; I’d cry my heart out feeling helpless."

She wanted to pay him a tribute as well as help the families who had been financially crippled by COVID-19. She started with three flavours – khatta aam, grated mango chutney and gulabi meetha achaar. The initial orders came from friends and family. Gradually, she started getting a lot of orders through Instagram and that's how the business took off. Each pickle bottle is sent with a handwritten note for her customer. Read her full interview here.

2. Yachika Chopra

Yachika Chopra, CIrca

Yachika Chopra is a Goa-based food entrepreneur who started her homemade pickle business, Circa, to pay a tribute to her mother who passed away in 2020. The pickles are made using family recipes handed down through generations. There is an all-female production team in charge of making these products free of any preservatives. In the future, Yachika wants to introduce a pickle flavour from every Indian state.

3. Kalpana and Uma Jha 

Sisters-in-law Kalpana and Uma Jha teamed up together to start an online pickle delivery service titled 'Jha Ji'. All the ingredients are bought from local farmers and traders in Mithila. They prepare around 400 to 500 kg of pickles every day. The duo is not only building a financially secure future for themselves but is also generating employment opportunities for women and youth alike. Currently working from home, they plan to set up a new manufacturing unit soon.

4.  Jayasree Desu

63-year-old Jayasree Desu from Chennai has been running her business of homemade podis and pickles in Guntur style for the last 5 years. She has received orders from cities like Guntur, Kavali, and Hyderabad. She credits her success to the support she got from her sisters-in-law, sisters and other family members who encouraged her to step out of her comfort zone and convert her hobby of making pickles and podis into a full-fledged food business.

This article is published in partnership with Google