There is a memory Goral Rajesh keeps coming back to.

Her grandmother in the kitchen, the smell of something warm and sweet filling the house, and a group of children — including Goral — lurking nearby, waiting for their chance.

"She was an excellent cook. We would relish the laddus, even hide and eat them. Sometimes, we would steal them, as they were in her custody!" she says, laughing at the memory.

That grandmother's kitchen is a long way from Bengaluru, where Goral now runs 'Rasoi Studio' out of her home. But the laddus she makes today — with jaggery, honey, dates, millets, and ghee — carry the same logic her grandmother worked with: real ingredients, made with care, for people who actually matter to you.

Two years in, Rasoi Studio serves more than 300 families through WhatsApp. It sells an average of two kilograms of laddus a day.

'I wanted to build something of my own'

Goral's relationship with food did not begin in any romantic way.

"I had a difficult childhood. But that made me very resilient. I had to take responsibility for caring for my mother and younger sister, and supporting the family financially early in life," she says.

From Class 3, she was the one buying groceries and vegetables for the family. The responsibility gave her something she would only understand much later: a deep instinct for good ingredients, and what it feels like when they are missing.

During her Class 10 vacation, financial pressures meant she took over cooking for the family entirely. "What started as a necessity slowly became a life skill, and eventually a passion," she says.

In Classes 11 and 12, she studied a vocational course in Food and Nutrition and attended workshops on food preservation. She later pursued a BA from Gujarat University — a BSc in Food and Nutrition was not available to her at the time, a gap she still rues, as it meant she could not practise as a dietician.

But one afternoon at a school entrepreneurship exhibition planted a seed that would take years to grow.

"I heard an inspiring talk by Ullasben Zaveri, founder of Gujju Masala, whose spice brand from Ahmedabad was exporting across the world. Her story sparked a dream in my heart that one day I too would build something of my own," says Goral.

The aptitude test that changed things

Life moved on. Goral got married to Rajesh, whom she had known as a neighbour in Ahmedabad. "When he proposed, I told him I came with a lot of baggage. He replied, 'I know you will stand by me whatever happens. I want you as my........

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