Shree Foods is the brain child of three daring individuals who plunged into the Indian food industry with little to no knowledge of how the industry worked. They have since fought and clawed their way to where they proudly stand now.
Mr. Dayne Shastri Paladee, the primary investor, was a director of the hugely successful PennywiseCosmetics Limited (Trinidad), but left it behind for a new life in India with his wife and kids, where he completed an Executive MBA in Entrepreneurship and Retail Management. Surrounded by a new culture with a multitude of different languages and customs, he decided to invest in the idea of simple, homely, delicious food.
Mrs. Rekha Paladee, the brains behind it all, is an all-rounder. Besides working and being a Bharatanatyam classical dancer all her life, she nurtured a passion for great food and a love of sharing it with others. Her interest in the corporate side of the story led her to undertake an Executive MBA in International Trade and Production Management. Currently, she isthe management liaison for the HR and heads the research team preparing recipes.
The third member of this eclectic cast is Mr. Ananth Ramachandran, the decisive worker bee. An MBA gold medalist in Finance and Marketing, he worked himself into the ground for 4 years. Growing increasingly tired of his hectic hours and scanty snack breaks, he eventually decided to quit his corporate IT life and dive headfirst into a dream close to his overworked heart. Traditional Iyer food was his secret love and he is currently relishing the chance to truly cherish it.
In 2011, the dream started out in 300 square feet of space. Sweat, blood and tears went into the restaurant (metaphorically, not literally) and the business eventually grew to fill 3000 square feet of commercial space in Hennur, Bangalore. By then, they were able to provide around 2000 meals a day.
However, at that point, Shree Foods was big enough that the problems of growingbusinesses started to creep in. Some workers would collect salaries and vanish without any notice. Others would get arrogant when given higher responsibilities and mistreat their fellow employees in their process. Chefs would leave and when new ones were hired, complaints about quality and consistency would start coming in.
To make things worse, civil authorities would routinely find infrastructural faults around the building and cordon off the area to fix it, thus making it hard for customers to see the restaurant, let alone come in to eat the food.
A meeting later, our heroes realized that they weren’t the sole individuals facing these issues and took it upon themselves to find a solution.
Thus the concept of frozen food was born! Almost every South Indian dish, idli, vada, sambhar and much more could be frozen for future use as long asthe recipe is just right and a meticulous freezing process is followed. So no more worrying about consistency, maintaining quality or even staff problems and their impact on daily running of business. Talk about convenience… They soon shifted business to a 10,000 square feet full-fledged factory in Hoskote, Bangalore. Shree Foods has started producing south indian dishes and variety parathas. They are now exploring options in sambhar, rasam, whole spices, spice powders and premixes like Upma and Pongal.
Shree Foods plans to get into the retail market, starting in and around Bangalore with their current products in the financial year 2017-18. They also intend to touch base with tier 1 and tier 2 cities in India by the financial year 2018-19.
SHREE FOODS