Adding Dum To Biryani

Six start-ups with a single mission are serving authentic, flavourful biryani, and minting pots of moolah in the process. The founders share the secret recipe to their success.

- Shivangi Asthana

Adit Madan loves biryani, and he especially relished the dish during his trips to Lucknow, Hyderabad and Kolkata. He longed for a better biryani back home in Delhi. He travelled for two years in South India, experimented, searched and mastered the art of biryani. “After attempting to cook biryani the right way for a thousand times, I found a right balance and ingredients for my gourmet biryani, much to the delight of my family,” he shares. Soon, Madan’s The Biryani Project took wings.

Kaushik Roy, a former Group COO at Zooropa Foods, holds extensive knowledge of F&B industry. His partner Vishal Jindal, a founder at Carpediem Capital Partners, based in Gurugram, keeps food and research close to his heart. Realizing it is time for them to start their own legacy in biryani and kebabs, they started Biryani by Kilo. Jindal says, “By next year we will be opening our outlets in the UAE, the UK and Singapore.”

Coming from a Bori-Muslim community, Farhat Saxena, Founder, Go Biryan, has a similarly exciting story. After completing MBA and spending 26 years as a software consultant and a corporate strategist, Saxena finally took a break and started an aunt-nephew company, Go Biryan (formerly known as Le Bereyan). Her nephew, Shehzaad Lokhandwala, Co-founder, comes from a premium car reseller background who also started to work on Chinese Wok – Sillichilli. They started off with their first store in Andheri after pooling their savings. Farhat adds, “Biryani is an everyday dish for us but now the art was to evoke a sense of celebration and yet keep it staple for the everyday consumer.”

ON A MISSION