Health in a chocolate bar

Being an entrepreneur is no game, it is a work that has maximum risks and involves a lot of pressure that one has to take. Even in these tough circumstances women, who wish to be independent and get recognised happen to work and strive hard for their business to reach a level that shows positive results. Same is the story of Natasha Pamnani and Hema Tirupati who run a business that promotes health food, 'Make the Jump'.

Natasha, who completed her engineering was always interested to do something on her own instead of working in the regular desk job. Her father being her mentor and with a support system like 'We Hub', she says, that it was much easier to start off the business.

Sharing details about the idea of 'Make the Jump' Natasha says, "We wanted to do something that manufactures smart snacking, basically set an alternative to the existing snacks. We initially started off with health bar and then we started off with healthy products like the waffle chips, these are baked and contain soya, which picked up really well."

The waffle chips are available in two flavours that come coated with dark and white chocolate and are available in stores, which are 100 grams each. The health bars are made based on the orders that they get. "We were at the gym and suddenly Hema and I happened to talk about this business and that's when we started it. My father manufactures machinery for wafers and cones, that's how the idea just came along," she added.

The idea that started in 2017 was implemented in 2018;now, 'Make the Jump' is a dream business of these two young women. They have a proper factory set up with people and machinery. The company also manufactures edible cups that are quite innovative in process and procedure, "Edible cups are mostly for catering and weddings.

You can fill in the cups with desserts or breakfast items, the whole concept of these cups is that you can have it in one bite; we provided these cups to Heart Cup Café. There is no hassle of washing vessels. The cups are waffle based and are coated with dark chocolate inside and you can have it with all the desserts."

The health bars have four variants. "Most classic ones are the super seeds and the dark chocolate. The super seeds are full of power nutrients, and the bar is filled with different seeds along with fig and jaggery. The dark chocolate is rich in fibre as it has oats and dark chocolate contents along with cranberry. We also have two experimental flavours, which is schezwan and Italian.

We enjoy Italian food and we got the Italian flavour into the health bar and the same applies to the Schezwan bar. All the bars hare rich in proteins as they have soya crisps and almonds."

Soon they want to be suppliers for retailer store. E-commerce is something they are looking at, "initially we started looking at with institutional sales, which is connecting with the corporate sectors. We are also going to supply it for the retail and start selling them through e-commerce too."

Every start-up has its share of challenges and so did these 30-something women. "We were budding entrepreneurs. We struggled in a lot of stages, but we are glad to be associated with 'We Hub' that gave us a platform to clear our doubts faster and in a clearer manner. They also connected us to the right person, which helped us. Now our struggle is to get our products into the retail segment, which is a challenge for us.

There is a lot of competition, which also contains negotiation with the retailer stores. " Natasha also mentions that it has been a great journey so far, doing things by themselves was a great achievement for both of them and coming from a business background and multi-tasking at home and work they feel that they are empowered and by virtue of being women they employ a large number of women at their facility. Their single belief is: Anything is possible if you want something bad enough.