How this woman entrepreneur started baking classes, ventured into food tourism, and clocked a monthly turnover of Rs 10 lakh

In 2015, Mitali G Dutta started a cooking class with just one student, a friend’s fiancée. While she never recovered the fees for that class, she went on to carve a successful career as a baking and culinary instructor in her hometown of Guwahati with the highly popular Food Sutra by Mitali.

She also scaled her ambitions by launching FSM Food Trails, culinary tours with training and dining concepts in Kaziranga and Manas National Parks in Assam, providing livelihood opportunities to many, especially women, while highlighting the rich cuisines of the state.

Her foray into entrepreneurship happened “quite by chance”.

Before that, her interesting backstory deserves mention. Mitali wanted to be a physiotherapist but found she was not cut out for the profession and joined an air hostess training academy instead. This led to a job with SOTC and Kingfisher Airlines at Bengaluru Airport.

“When the airport shifted to the outskirts of the city and commuting became a problem, I decided to move back to Guwahati. Since I already had experience in the services industry, I was offered a front-desk job at UNICEF. Marriage happened, and along came motherhood,” she says.

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Becoming a food expert

While on a break as a stay-at-home parent, Mitali hit upon an interesting blog post on how women can start their enterprises from home, including cooking classes.

“After some research, I figured that women in Guwahati were interested to learn more about cooking. I was a fairly good cook myself and so started with cooking sessions in 2015, from my home with just one student,” she says.

This was just the beginning. She later elevated her skills by learning baking from top experts in the country and sharing the same with the students. Gradually, the number of students increased via engagement through social platforms.

Sundays were busy days, with groups of women spilling all over the home. This led her to rent an apartment in the same building, which she converted into a food studio.

It was a novel concept in Guwahati at that time, and hordes of women trooped in to learn the basics of baking and moving to whipped cream cakes, buttercream cakes, and fondant cakes. During the wedding season, wedding cakes also became popular.

“My aim was also to empower these women to learn and then take their classes and become financially independent,” she says.

In 2017, an exciting turnaround happened. Her popular videos on Facebook caught the attention of Chef Kunal Kapur, who was looking for someone from Assam to present the thalis of the state for his show, Utsav Thalis of India series. The show gave her both popularity and credibility as a food expert.

“Following this, a team from the World Wildlife Fund approached me to help people around the national parks of Kaziranga and Manas, and if I could find tribal communities to highlight their cuisines. Most were former poachers now looking at earning decent livelihoods,” she says.

Curated experiences

People from these communities were either safari drivers in resorts or managing other tasks, and FSM Trails aimed to change this.

Mitali took training sessions on food preparation, presentation, hygiene, and authentic ways to showcase tribal cuisines. To provide an alternative source of livelihood to rural communities, she curated FSM Food Trails, culinary tours with training and dining concepts.

“As part of these tours, rural women share different traditional recipes of local cuisines with food tourists and later serve the same to them. The Manas Spring Festival contributed to the tourism sector and aided the livelihoods of local tribes. This idea of empowering locals of rural areas through a sustainable model was praised by celebrity chefs, renowned food bloggers across India, travel writers from the country and abroad.”

The experience costs Rs 500 upwards per person, and Mitali works with a team of 12 on this venture.

The pandemic did not affect the experiences as protocols continued to be followed. But Food Sutra by Mitali, her popular baking classes, took quite a hit. Unable to organise physical workshops, she searched for ways to get back in the game.

“I started workshops online, reaching out to women all over the world. I train around 1,000 students a month now,” she says.

Currently, Mitali is part of the first cohort of the Academy of Women Entrepreneurs under the US Consulate and ASEAN conference for mentorship to take FSM Food Trails further.

It’s a win-win situation. While Mitali has a thriving business, she is also empowering others to start up on their own. This year, she was also recognised by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, the Government of India, and other women entrepreneurs from various parts of India.

“I aim to empower a large number of women to become baking entrepreneurs and those in rural communities to showcase their food to the world,” Mitali says.