: Theobromas Founder Braved a Crippling Injury to Build a Rs 230 Crore Bakery Biz #IndiaNEWS #Entrepreneurs Kainaz Messman Harchandrai remembers waking up with tears in her eyes in the 80s because of

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Theobromas Founder Braved a Crippling Injury to Build a Rs 230 Crore Bakery Biz #IndiaNEWS #Entrepreneurs
Kainaz Messman Harchandrai remembers waking up with tears in her eyes in the 80s because of the number of onions being chopped in her home. “Our whole house had sacks of onions that would be chopped for the Kheema or the burgers for my mother’s catering business. Then, after school, my older sister (Tina Messman Wykes) and I would come home to countertops full of handmade chocolates, which we would help her wrap,� recalls Kainaz.
Today, Kainaz is the owner of Theobroma, whose brownies, red velvet cakes, and other delectables are famous all over the country. And even after 17 years of starting the brand, her focus on quality hasn’t shifted.
Growing up in a foodie Parsi family, she always had an affinity for treating people to good food. Kainaz’s banker mother, Kamal Messman, quit her job to look after her two kids. Her father, Farokh, was a pharmaceutical businessman who started as a milk delivery man.
When the kids started school, her entrepreneurial mother decided to start a fast-food business in Mumbai.
Theobroma founder Kainaz Messman Harchandrai with her mother Kamal.
“It was at a cricket match one day that the chairman of the Government-owned MAFCO (Maharashtra Agro and Fruit Processing Corporation) stalls tried my mother’s sandwich. After that, he arranged a business meeting with my mother, after which her business took off,� says Kainaz.
“We then started selling sandwiches, burgers, chicken rolls to all the MAFCO stalls in Mumbai,� she adds.
While pastry shops and dessert cafés weren’t popular in the 80s, Kamal started selling cakes and pastries. “My mother would wake up at 5 am to prepare the food and would still find time to surprise us with delicacies for lunch and dinner,� says Kainaz.
She adds, “She was probably one of the first to discover an eggless brownie recipe. She went on to supply her ‘vegetarian’ brownies for the Sizzling Brownie dish at a big restaurant chain, Blue Foods. �
“Standing out from egg-free cakes which were rather hard and dry, it was through so many experiments that we got the consistency of the eggless brownies right,� she says.
Very soon, they started sending their brownies via bus to different cities like Jaipur and even the South.
Despite shadowing her mother in the kitchen and using a tweaked version of her eggless brownie recipes to date, the 42-year-old says she never planned on becoming a chef. “I didn’t plan to follow in her footsteps. Instead, I wanted to become a lawyer. But when I was 16, I went to France as a Rotary Youth Exchange student. That trip catalysed my inner chef tendencies.

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