On weekends, the Khandelwal family kitchen in Jaipur would look a little different. 

Wax is melted, fragrances are measured, and colourful moulds are brought out as siblings Unnati and Udit Khandelwal get to work. The process looks far more organised today, but their early experiments were anything but.

There were spills on the floor, broken jars and several kitchen utensils that did not quite survive the process. Once, hot wax even ended up on the family's freshly whitewashed floor.

“We have messed up mom's six to seven utensils,” Udit, 20, says with a laugh, recalling those early days.

It is an amusing memory now, but those messy experiments were also the beginning of something the siblings had not initially planned as a business.

In June 2023, Unnati, 24, and her younger brother Udit, 20, started making candles at home after their parents encouraged them to take up something creative. Neither had any experience in candle-making. Unnati was building her career in digital marketing, while Udit was still in college.

What began with a few YouTube videos, a Rs 500 candle-making workshop, and an initial investment of a few thousand rupees slowly turned into GiftwithTwist, a personalised gifting venture that now caters to customers across India and has even fulfilled a recent bulk order of around 500 customised candles for Dubai.

The siblings have built it all without giving up their careers. For them, GiftwithTwist has remained a side hustle — one that has taught them how to turn a hobby into a business, manage money and customers, and perhaps most importantly, figure out how to work with each other.

From a creative experiment to their first order

The idea for the business came rather casually. “We were sitting idly, and our parents suggested that we should do something creative,” Udit recalls.

The siblings began looking for ideas online and eventually landed on candle-making. It seemed simple enough when they watched others do it.

Their first attempt quickly proved otherwise.

They learnt the basics through YouTube and Instagram but also attended a three- to four-hour workshop offline. They experimented with wax, fragrances, colours, jars and moulds, gradually understanding that there was much more to making a good candle than simply melting wax and putting it into a container.

Their first product was a jar candle, which they still have with them.

“We experienced that the candle-making industry is not so easy,” Udit says. “We learnt about many materials, how to use them, fragrance them, and make different designs.”

They started with an investment of roughly Rs 5,000, buying supplies from Amazon, Flipkart and local dealers. Some of the moulds were expensive, while their initial packaging was fairly basic.

At that point, however, they were not thinking too far ahead. They were simply experimenting with something new.

That changed when their first customers came along.

Their first order arrived around Diwali in 2023, a few months after they started. Soon, they realised that the candles they were making for fun were things people were actually willing to pay for.

The turning point came when a corporate office reached out through Instagram for candles for Diwali gifting.

The order was for around 200 candles. 

“I would come from college, and my sister would come from her........

© The Better India