This woman entrepreneur is making PCOS and diabetic-friendly desserts

Priyasha Saluja was diagnosed with PCOS when she was just 13. As a food lover with a sweet tooth, it was tough for her to enjoy her favourite treats while taking care of her medical condition.

“At the time, there was limited knowledge and conversation around PCOS and its symptoms. I grew up facing a lot of challenges and shame around my health condition,” she says.

This led her to research more about her condition. Saluja also started experimenting with healthy ingredients to make desserts at home.

In 2018, around 9 years after she was diagnosed with PCOS, Saluja started documenting her journey of healthy eating through her Instagram page. She started sharing recipes, healthy eating habits, and lifestyle tips to encourage mindful living, which gained attention.

“I realised that people wanted to eat healthy, but lacked time, resources, and inclination to prepare snacks for themselves. This insight led me to start my own company—The Cinnamon Kitchen,” she tells HerStory.

The Cinnamon Kitchen claims to be offering 100% gluten-free, preservative-free, refined sugar-free, and flour-free, plant-based D2C products. The Delhi-based brand offers a range of products like cookies, chips, cakes, bread, and more.

“I am passionate about sweet food and I have made a career out of it,” she says.

Love for cooking

Saluja says food has been an integral part of her life and the passion for cooking runs in her family.

“Everyone in my family is a great cook. While everyone else cooked North Indian delicacies, I got interested in preparing deserts, especially because I had a sweet tooth,” she says.

Saluja was in her high school when she first tried to bake a cake for a friend. Although the cake turned out to be an ‘epic fail’, the eventuality of this incident changed the course of her life.

Since then, there was no going back. She kept experimenting with different recipes like Ghewar, Malai pedha, and more.

Finding the inner passion

Saluja, who hails from Noida, completed Business Management at Delhi University. After graduation, she joined the taxation department in PwC. It was about time that she realised that she wanted to do something creative. As such she decided to venture into marketing and advertising. She joined Denstu Inc. where she worked with brands like Parle, ITC, etc.

“Although my marketing job enabled me to create, many times I struggled with limited say and less freedom. I wanted more autonomy in the process,” she says.

In 2019, Saluja’s social media presence was noticed by a brand in Mumbai, and they sent her an invitation to set up a food stall at their event. Excited by the opportunity, she spent the weekend creating a logo and planning the dessert menu.

Saluja received a lot of appreciation after the event, and soon she decided to quit her job and start her own business.

She started her company as a home kitchen with just Rs 50,000 investment. Saluja recalls that in the beginning she used to get two to three orders a week, which made her quite tensed about the future of the business.

“I had left my job and we were not getting many orders initially. It seemed to be a difficult situation,” she says.

Despite the challenge, she continued with her efforts, and the number increased to two or three orders a day and then nearly ten orders a day.

“Being an entrepreneur is an ever-evolving role where you wear multiple hats. This is the most challenging yet rewarding part of the job,” she adds.

Talking about the challenges she faced as a woman entrepreneur, Saluja says that she grew up in a comparatively fair society where gender discrimination was not a personal challenge for her.

“Additionally, the people in the segment my business operates in are quite welcoming and helpful,” she adds.

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Offering health with taste

Saluja initially began her venture by selling packaged foods such as Nut Butter. However, she soon realised that the limited shelf life of two months meant customers had to wait at least two days to receive their next bottle. This delay was affecting their rate of repeat purchases.

Therefore, Saluja decided to start a bakery business under The Cinnamon Kitchen. The brand offers cakes for different occasions across Delhi NCR.

Saluja’s packaged food business offers hosts of products such as fudge, flourless almond cookies, energy bites, bread, flour and more. Packed and grocery items cost around Rs 350, and cakes are priced above Rs 1,100.

She says the products are suitable for people with PCOS, diabetes, and the ones on Keto diet as they use ingredients like vegan dark chocolate, hazelnuts, raw khansari, dates, almond butter, oats, organic almond flour, flax seeds, coconut sugar (for regular), and Stevia (for Keto).

The company has recorded Rs 1,40,000 sales in its first year. The following year, it saw sales to the tune of Rs 12,50,000, and the company is expecting to close this year (FY 2024) with Rs 6 crore sales.

“We started as a brand on Instagram and that helped me to interact with customers to know what they actually need,” Saluja says.

Saluja firmly believes that beyond offering products with ‘no sugar, no preservatives,’ it’s their innovative recipes that they truly take pride in.

The startup also comprises of over 80% women workforce. Additionally, Saluja actively organises baking workshops tailored for women. These workshops typically span three hours and cost Rs 1,750. Saluja notes that many homemakers enthusiastically participate in these workshops.

The Cinnamon Kitchen has been selling its products through its website and other e-commerce platforms like Blinkit, Amazon, Le Marche, and more. It is also available in offline stores like Greener, Nature’s Soul, and more.

The bootstrapped startup recently appeared in Shark Tank season 4, and raised Rs 60 lakh from Aman Gupta, Founder of boAt.

In the coming years, Saluja wishes to focus on improving the shelf life of the products and expanding into more offline stores.