EAT, PRAY, EMPOWER

Tapsi Upadhyay, 22, has turned heads with her nationwide street food business. But her real mission is loftier

- K. SUNIL THOMAS

It is not clear exactly whose fame rubbed off on whom.

A few weeks ago, the Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra shared a video on X of a 22-year-old woman driving a Thar—a popular off-roader from his company—which was towing a food cart on the streets of Delhi. She bought the vehicle with the money she made from the street food business.

In the post that quickly went viral, Mahindra asks, “What are off-road vehicles meant to do? Help people go places they haven’t been able to before. Help people explore the impossible.”

A woman running a panipuri stall may sound near impossible to those who are aware of the national capital’s law and order record and reputation when it comes to women. But then Tapsi Upadhyay believes in going places where she, or women in general, have never been to before.

Like running a panipuri stall on the bustling streets of Delhi late into the night. Or rather, nearly 50 of them across the country—almost all of them run by young women.

It is hard to determine if Upadhyay’s self-branded ‘B.Tech Paani Puri Wali’ food carts—now present in 46 locations from Hyderabad to Haryana and Ahmedabad to Delhi—is more of an epitome of the entrepreneurial streak among India’s startup generation, or a feelgood story of a young Indian woman breaking shackles to achieve her potential against all odds. Perhaps it is both.