When Anjali of Supreme Spice, an online home-based business owner, contacted me last month about advertising opportunities at Mahanandi, I was little bit hesitant. But I thought it over and said “yes”. Why not? People who start home-based businesses are like bloggers, I think. We know that there is a chance that nobody would ever read our blog. Similarly, the common concern for small home-based business is to get the word out into the market that is fiercely occupied by behemoth corporations. Still we write blogs and start businesses. Mahanandi is all about celebrating food related passion. So here it is Mahanandi’s first ad.
Anjali in her own words about “Supreme Spice” :
“I am from Bombay, came to US 12 yrs back. Used to work as a Oracle programmer. After my kids, I quit my job and was enjoying my new role as a mom/homemaker. Then when my daughter was about 3 yrs old, I started introducing her to our regular Indian food with little spice in it. She used to like the taste but hated it when she bit into a small ginger piece or the cumin seeds. Actually she started refusing any food that showed any sign of mustard seeds or cumin seeds in it. So I started looking for ideas to slip these spices in her food. And during one of my trips to India I learned about spice extracts. Talked with manufacturer and I started working on it as a business idea. Started with few extracts first, tested them with my friends. Loved them. It became very easy for me to slip spices like ginger and garlic in my daughter’s food. I could see that my daughter was getting less cold and cough because I had increased her garlic intake without her knowing it.
I started my business just about a year back with just a few spice extracts. I first started with Tea masala (blend of 6 spices), Ginger, Cardamom and a few more. I got very good response from people because using extracts was easier, eliminated the need to chop and peel and gave the full flavor and fragrance of the spice. Also, extracts makes it easy to customize food for everyone. For example: Make one pot of regular Indian chai and then customize every cup to make Masala Tea, Ginger tea or Cardamom tea. I slowly expanded and now carry about 15 different spice extracts. All pure and premium quality spice extracts.
This business has become my passion now. I import them from India and market them under my own brand name. I did everything from designing the boxes, labels, website, marketing, etc. I very firmly believe that it’s important to incorporate spices in daily cooking. But even when whole spices are not available, you will always have spice extracts for your cooking.:)
Please visit my site www.SupremeSpice.com to see the full range of spice extracts that we carry. Thanks!”
Indira, a Happy New Year to you and Vijay!
Congrats on beginning to monetize your blog with a conscience effort on who you promote. It was very interesting to read about Anjali and her spice extracts. I am sure she will be very successful, given the innovativeness of her product and her sheer determination!
I also thought closing comments on your blog was yet another interesting step you took. It reminded me of this and his subsequent follow-up.
Best wishes!
Manisha
Comment by Manisha — January 16, 2007 @ 8:28 am
Thanks for the wishes Manisha. I wish you the same!
About comments – I read the link you’ve posted. Interesting read. Last week I too felt the same way. Free. Then emails started. Between answering the same question several times on email or just reopening the comments – choice was clear to me. Readers are very much curious about the ingredients/recipes to stay silent here at Mahanandi. They like to communicate and I enjoy interacting with them, via comments that is. I am also learning more about myself everyday through Mahanandi.
Comment by Indira — January 16, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
You’re right, it depends on the nature of the blog, what the blogger’s goals are and whether you want to meet your reader’s expectations. Unlike a business or marketing blog, a food blog is all about sharing so you can say that the interaction is critical. But it can get very time consuming.
What you could consider is setting up forums for recipe discussion only and getting some foodies or some of the folks who you have featured on your blog to help you work the forums. That way some of the pressure on you would be eased and the interaction preserved. It would also help cut out any adverse or negative comments as someone from your team would see it as soon as it happens.
Comment by Manisha — January 17, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
Indira, I love moms who quit their jobs to take care of little ones and I love them more when they try to start small business like these from their homes! I wish every mom who stays home, would think up of something like this. I really wish this advertisement will inspire a lot of other women! Great! Just great! and a happy new year to your family!
Comment by InjiPennu — January 22, 2007 @ 7:19 am
reading about mentulu is very interesting,good effort anjali
Comment by rajyalakshmi — October 9, 2007 @ 2:51 am