Soumya's Story

I was in 8th grade when my mother first showed me how to bake and it was pure love for me, I was hooked. I started learning the art and starting experimenting with recipes I saw on TV or magazines, and slowly became the official baker at my house. While I loved baking but never thought of taking it up professionally until 2012, when I took a pause in my career in Interior Designing.

Once it all became a little serious, I enrolled in advanced baking and sugar crafting courses and didn’t really pay heed to how unhealthy and harmful preservatives, artificial colors and essences, emulsifiers, etc. were. It was standard practice, the norm followed by literally all commercial bakeries in town, where convenience and profit margins won over health. As an apprentice, I did as told and taught, put my head down and followed the herd into doing what sold, and mind you, I did make decent money. Though, there was always that lingering feeling of not doing the right thing, which I constantly tried to curb.

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In 2015, my husband got a new job and we moved to Southern Africa. I continued my baking adventures but to my surprise found all the artificial ingredients I was so used to, hard to come by. With little choice, I started experimenting with different, local organic ingredients,  came up with new recipes, started selling them locally (with little hope) but the response I got was phenomenal. This completely changed my views on baking and kick started this new phase in my baking career, guilt free! I started researching ingredients, traditional techniques and built up my repertoire of different/alternate flours, usage of fresh fruits for flavours and edible flowers for making them look gorgeous.  

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We finally moved back to India in 2017 and organic food movement was gaining ground. I thought I was ready, with all my newly acquired skills and a ready market, I would just slot in smoothly and be successful. However, to my utter shock, cakes with fondants, artificial ingredients, still ruled the market (still do!). But, I was sure and determined to not go back in the grind again and that's when I bumped into Neha and Puneet in 2018. From day one, we shared the same vision, philosophies of using natural and organic ingredients, and even before I knew it, I was already creating products which were kids friendly, healthy and also catered to vegans and celiac. Fast forward to now, I lead the food team at The Prodigal Farms and love what I do, guilt free!