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This 27-YO Left Engineering to Build a Rs 12 Lakh-a-Month Zero-Waste Cafe That’s Changing How Kids Eat

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“I used to hate eating vegetables and millets,” admits 10-year-old Jahnavi Nanda. “Once, my mum gave me ragi for dinner, and I was not very happy to eat it.” Similarly, eight-year-old Kabir recalls his aversion to anything remotely healthy. “I always thought healthy food tasted bland and boring,” he says with a shy grin. “I was far more interested in munching on crisps and chocolates during my meals.”

For children growing up in an age of sugar-laden cereals and colourful packaging, the idea of eating for wellness rather than taste feels foreign. But a change is taking root in Gujarat, as more people begin to rediscover the value of ancient grains. Slowly, children are beginning to change, not just in what they choose to eat, but in how they think about food and the world around them.

At the centre of this change is a small cafe. It does not look extraordinary from the outside, but inside, it is helping to shape new habits, kinder choices, and a better understanding of where our food comes from.

The engineer who returned to her roots

That place is ‘Cafe Aarambh’, which means ‘beginning’ in Hindi. It was founded by 27-year-old Nishtha Chauhan, an electronics and communications engineer who left a promising career in aerospace to return to the earth, quite literally. Instead of the conventional corporate path, Nishtha chose to till the soil, grind millets and compost kitchen scraps.

Her journey is not a spontaneous detour. Raised in a modest Gujarati household, she grew up surrounded by the wisdom of her grandfather, a millet practitioner who firmly believed in the goodness of ancient grains like ragi (finger millet), jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet), and little millet. Mealtimes at home were simple and wholesome.

She had grown up accustomed to seeing all the kitchen’s wet waste carefully composted. “At the time, I did not think much of it,” she tells The Better India. “But once I became an adult and looked around me, I began to realise just how deeply those habits were ingrained in me, and how important they really are.”

After graduating from Lalbhai Dalpatbhai College of Engineering, Nishtha joined Azista Aerospace, where she worked on satellite payloads in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It was an exciting work which was intellectually demanding and high-profile. But amid the sterile labs and long hours, she felt increasingly disconnected.

Nishtha Chauhan always wanted to start a food business, but she was looking for something that could help society and the environment

“I always knew I wanted to start something of my own in the food sector. But I did not want it to be just another cafe serving pizzas or fast food. The market is already full of that. I wanted to create something that would not only nourish people but also give back to the environment and support our local farmers. It had to be rooted in purpose and not just profit,” she explains.

Then the COVID-19 waves hit, which brought a pause to her usual routine and gave her a chance to rethink everything. As she watched the world buckle under the weight of disease, lifestyle disorders, and climate anxiety, she could not shake the feeling that food lay at the centre of it all. She began researching nutrition, agroecology, and India’s neglected food heritage.

Her research soon led her to focus on millets and organically grown vegetables, all tied to the idea of a zero-waste lifestyle. “The more........

© The Better India