Banker to baker
How Sharmishtha Mulye’s Sam’s evolved into a social commerce food venture during the COVID-19 pandemic
Times of Urbania reader Sharmishtha Mulye lives in the Acura building of Rustomjee Urbania and runs her food business, Sam’s, which sells dry snacks and seasonal farm products. She markets and manages it entirely by WhatsApp Business. Through word-of-mouth publicity by happy customers, Sam’s has a customer base of several hundred among Urbania’s residents. Sam’s also has hundreds of customers staying outside Thane and even India.
We trace Sam’s journey in today’s issue to showcase a resident entrepreneur with customers mostly from the Urbania township.
We frequently hear the words mompreneur and homepreneur in the media, and today’s article feature such a home-based entrepreneur. WhatsApp Business is a great app for entrepreneurs like Sharmishtha for its ease of use and enabling business communication and transactions.
WhatsApp-verified Business accounts of entrepreneurs are a complete small enterprise business solution. It lets a business list a catalog, business hours, contact details, and company information. In addition, a shopping cart feature lets customers order through WhatsApp by collating their requirements. WhatsApp even has a feature that lets customers pay businesses on the UPI platform. No wonder WhatsApp Business became a great aid to homepreneurs in 2020 and 2021 when COVID-19 pandemic restrictions prevented in-person shopping.
Sharmistha hails from Ratnagiri in Maharashtra’s Konkan region. Her brother, Ameya Apte’s family, has lived at Urbania’s Acura building since 2015. Sharmishtha and her family moved into Urbania from Charni Road in South Mumbai in June 2020, and they now are her brother’s family’s neighbors.
Sharmishtha worked at the Standard Chartered Bank till 2011, after which she switched to wealth management advisory for six years in a partnership. In 2017, losing her business partner, she closed her business. Her second business foray was the distribution of Koyna food products she represented for three years.
A passionate cook with a hobby of food experiments, Sharmishtha used the time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic started to test her culinary skills. Getting appreciation from friends and family for her food creations, she ventured into selling nankhatais, chiwdas, and laddoos. With sales picking up to make her snack sales a viable business, there was no looking back, and in October 2020, she started Sam’s, now one of Urbania’s most popular food brands.
Sam’s derives its name from the founder, Sharmishtha Abhijit Mulye’s initials and includes the name of both spouses, Sharmishtha and Abhijit. Sam’s offers a range of sweet and savory snacks, including nankhatai (biscuits), chiwda, pudding, ready mixes, and laddoos.
The Sam’s nankhatai range includes Tuttifruty, nachni, coffee, nutmeg, rajgira, dry fruit, kesar badam, choco chips, wheat, wheat, orange, and others. The rajgira nankhatai is suitable for consumption in fasting. Some of Sam’s fifteen varieties of nankhatais, like the Rajgira ones, are unique in the market and not available commonly. The savory range includes poha, potato, and makkai chiwda. The potato chiwda is suitable for fasting and as a tea time snack, a favorite of many Sam’s customers.
Crunchy wheat, nachni, methi, and besan laddoos are the sweets on offer, apart from nutmeg pudding. Sam’s methi thepla mix is a ready mix for making delicious theplas at home.
In summer, Sam’s offers fresh mangoes, Kairi panne (raw mango juice), jackfruit chips, papad, pickles, cashews, and aam papdi (mango jelly). It sources those farm products from the Konkan region. The jackfruit chips fried in coconut oil are popular.
Sam’s Alphonso mangoes are from a five-decade-old family orchard at Ratnagiri. Sam’s sources the home-processed Konkan farm products through relatives in the region.
Unlike the homemade snack range, Konkan farm products involve outstation logistics and have a longer lead time from order to supply. Sam’s accepts farm product orders in summers with a two to four-week lead time it needs to organize supplies from Ratnagiri and its nearby areas.
A tie-up with Anjani Couriers ensures the Konkan products reach Sharmishtha at home and to her Thane customers. After they land at Urbania, Sharmishtha inspects the Ratnagiri before customer deliveries.
Sam’s is not a hobby but a serious business venture. It has an FSSAI license, uses WhatsApp business, and is so popular that international customers seek its products through courier delivery. Sometimes, customers pay twice to three times their food order value for the air courier charges they incur.
Foreign customers are also the ones who use the cart feature of WhatsApp business to order digitally. In addition, WhatsApp Business offers a payment feature only in India that Sam’s customers currently do not use. Sam’s lists its catalog on Whatsapp and uses the label feature to track chats.
Sam’s USP is its products’ freshness from the methods and immediate delivery post-manufacture. In addition, strict hygiene measures in making and sourcing high-quality ingredients help the brand to please customers and retain lifelong loyalty.
Sam’s laddoos and nankhatais have cow ghee and make the fried items in refined oil. As all products are made-to-order with a two-day lead time, Sam’s products reach customers when fresh. As a result, Sam’s is very popular among customers looking for a home-like taste in their snacks.
Sam’s uses a dishwasher for cleaning utensils and relies on frequent handwashing practices for food safety. Only Sharmishtha does the cooking to ensure quality and snack consistency. She bakes products in an Oven Toaster Grill and uses regular home utensils to make the other products. In short, the home-like cooking methods ensure Sam’s products are like what consumers make in their homes.
Sam’s caters to customers who want fresh homemade snacks over store-bought ones. Its customers are in all age groups, from infancy to ninety-year-old. The wide product range ensures there is something to interest and attracts consumers of every age.
Sam’s has received touching feedback that its laddoos taste the same as those a customer’s mother makes. Sharmishtha is also happy to be certified a good chef by older women who are proficient cooks. One customer prefers Sam’s Batata chiwda and eats only that brand when having his daily evening tea. Such customer loyalty has ensured Sam’s is a popular food brand among hundreds of customers whose numbers keep increasing.
Sam’s relies exclusively on WhatsApp for promotion apart from happy customers introducing new ones. One of Sam’s customers in the media industry worked with WhatsApp Business and suggested showcasing Sam’s as a successful venture that relied on the WhatsApp platform.
Thus, in March 2022, CNBC TV 18 showcased Sharmishtha and Sam’s through an interview highlighting her homepreneur business relying on WhatsApp messaging app. WhatsApp calls its Business App a SMBSathi and considers Sam’s a great example of a small business succeeding through the app.
Sam’s is in the food business where demand is generally steady but peaks during festivals like Diwali, Raksha Bandhan, Christmas, and New Year. Sam’s customers prefer its gift boxes instead of giving store-bought chocolates or sweets on such occasions.
Sometimes customers don’t allow the two-day lead time to make the order fresh which challenges Sharmishtha and her family. Packaging bought in urgency costs higher than the norm, but Sam’s ensures it meets customer requirements even by spending more than routine.
One amazing aspect of Urbania’s local businesses like Sam’s is they cater to a huge customer base of several thousand high-rise apartment residents.
Sam’s delivers orders through Sharmishtha’s twenty-year son, Rutwij, a final-year engineering student. During peak orders, Sharmishtha’s mother, Radhika Apte, and parents-in-law Vrinda and Mukund Mulye sometimes chip in to help her meet the high customer demand. So too, Sharmishtha’s husband, electronics engineer Abhijit Mulye, and brother, Ameya Apte, a merchant navy Captain. During Diwali 2021, Abhijit and Ameya joined in the deliveries touching nearly a hundred orders from Urbania.
Sharmishtha’s sister-in-law Smruti Apte is also her neighbor and helps with Sam’s marketing and communication, including product shoots. Using just a Smartphone, Smruti clicks pictures of Sam’s products, the phone catalog, and home-chef group posts. Sam’s is a great example of a team of family members helping a woman entrepreneur run a food business smoothly.
Sharmishtha is thankful to Urbania residents for their support in patronizing her venture and spreading the word about it in the township. As she is a member of Urbania’s home chef, Khana Khazana, and home-chef groups on WhatsApp, many Urbanians already know Sam’s and its owner. Moreover, regular public customer encouragement on Urbania’s WhatsApp groups helps Sam’s gain, new customers.
She confirms receiving Urbanians’ co-operation in delivery timings and publicly sharing their appreciation, which has helped Sam popularize its range at the Rustomjee Urbania township.
The next time you order nankhatais, laddoos, or chiwda, consider Sam’s range in their catalog https://wa.me/c/919867288655. They are just a WhatsApp message away and are certified great-township brand by Urbania’s many hundred residents. Also, you can be Vocal-for-Local for Urbania’s home-grown brands like Sam’s, with a great product range and sterling reputation.
I have ordered farm-fresh cashews and jackfruit chips from Sam’s. Their fresh cashews had the aroma missing in store cashews that have stayed in the supply chain for many months. In addition, the jackfruit chips had very low browning or caramelization, a common issue you find in such chips that you buy from stores.
Writing this article and learning more about Sam’s product range, I am now curious to explore their entire product list.
Bon Appétit.