Sweet Nothings Over Rosogolla

Bengal entrepreneurs add tulsi and stevia to rosogolla, turn their passion into a wellness business.

- Moushumi Basu

A COMPARATIVELY young breed of entrepreneurs in West Bengal is taking the state’s iconic dish Rosogolla to a whole new sweet level. These men, some of whom have quit their fancy white-collar jobs to pursue their passion for sweets, have innovated the dish to attract a rather elusive group—the health-conscious and the weight watchers.

The traditional Rosogollas, which recently acquired the Geographical Index (GI) tag, are white, spongy, luscious cheese balls that remain soaked in sugary syrup. “But many, particularly the youth, remain wary of Rosogollas’ sugar content due to concerns like diabetes and obesity,” says Sitangshu Roy, one of the entrepreneurs, sitting in the 60-year-old Satyanarayan Mistanna Bhandar in Singur town in Hooghly district. Sitangshu has inherited the sweet shop from his great-grandfather. “This prompted me and my two brothers to innovate a healthy alternative that people can gorge on without guilt,” he adds.

In 2014, Sitangshu’s brother Abhishek quit his job at Infosys in Bengaluru “to reinvent and expand” the family business. The two brothers, in their early 30s, also involved their third brother Arunangshu, 22, to create tulsi Rosogollas—light green balls with the therapeutic values of holy basil and the sweetening from stevia leaves that cuts the calorie intake by half. Abhishek says, the sweet is “as delectable as original Rosogollas”.

However, creating this unique product was not easy. A lot of research went into maintaining the pH balance of the cottage cheese (derived by curdling milk with lemon juice) that imparts the right mix of taste and health, and prepare the proportion of tulsi leaf residue and its filtrate that need to be added to the sweet.