Malabar parotta
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Assam: Diganta Das
2023
Sukrita Baruah, April 3, 2023: The Indian Express
When he was 18, like many young men in the state, Diganta Das left his home in Assam to look for work in Bangalore. Despite more than a decade of work in South India, the pandemic brought him back home with no money in his wallet. But what he did have was the knowledge of how to make a good Malabar parotta.
Now, with a six-month-old parotta manufacturing unit, 32-year-old Das is selling packaged parottas – a once unfamiliar food item – every day to residents of Upper Assam.
“I’m the first businessman in my family,” said Das, a resident of Biswanath Chariali. His father was a farmer and, after completing school, he travelled to Bangalore in 2009 to supplement his family’s income.
Over the years, he did many jobs in many cities: room service at hotels; security work in Mumbai; painting machines at a construction company; coconut husking; and, most crucially, various stints at parotta-making and packaging units.
In early 2020, his friend Suriya Thapa from Tinsukia in Assam, who he had met in Bangalore and had also worked in parotta manufacturing units, decided to take the skills he had picked up to start his own such unit.
Das joined him in marketing. They identified Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh as a market with less competition and Thapa set up shop. But it was just a month before the pandemic and the national lockdown struck.
Along with the crash in business, Das had another worry: his wife back home was due to give birth soon. The baby was born while he was in Andhra Pradesh.
“The day the lockdown lifted, I rushed home. When I finally met my baby, she was a month old and I barely had Rs 10 in my wallet. That is when my mind began working on how I should set up something here,” he said.
Two years ago, he met Faizul Hoque, who too had set up a parotta-making unit in his home in Udalguri in Assam, and began selling his product in the market around his hometown.
It was six months ago that he decided to take the plunge and start a unit of his own in Biswanath Chariali.
His old friend Suriya Thapa, whose business in Vijayawada continues, lent him a hand. “I helped him out with his investments. It’s not a formal business partnership, more like helping a friend out,” he said.
“When I first entered this market, the parotta was not really a product that was known. But there are some shops in my town that accepted me and liked my product and began carrying it in their stores,” said Das.
With a staff of 18, Das says he earns enough to meet his business expenses. The next step, he hopes, is profits.
