[100 Emerging Women Leaders] Tanu Ganguly is building a community of mums who review food

While working as an editor at NDTV Foods, Tanu Ganguly faced a personal challenge--her son was diagnosed with a food allergy.

“That was my first experience where I realised that even the most seemingly harmless food items could be severe for people, and flare up in some conditions,” she shares.

Upon researching to find what would suit her son’s diet, Ganguly did not find many answers online.

“All you had were superficial and cursory, thumbs up and thumbs down kind of reviews which were not very helpful,” she says.

Having been in the food segment, she realised the gap and wanted to come up with a solution. Ganguly started Mishry Reviews in 2019 to provide authentic food reviews.

“Mishry began as a repository of authentic reviews in the kitchen and dining space for food products, not post-sale restaurant critiques, but presale reviews, which would enable a better buying decision. Our portals, Mishry.com and Mishry Hindi, feature reviews by our editorial team,” she says.

While it began as a non-community initiative, soon Ganguly decided to include mothers into the organisation. At present, Mishry has fostered a community comprising over 1,000 mums called ‘Mishry Mums’.

So far, over 4,500 reviews have been published on the portals. The community reviews all kinds of products in the cooking and dining space, ranging from spices and sauces to dairy products and staples such as rice, atta, and dals.

The mums participate in the 'Monthly Review baskets' to share their honest opinion on products, which are published on the websites.

Ganguly shares, “The whole point was to include mums who have that unaccounted and undocumented power to discern the better product. We wanted to build a space for mothers to ask and receive honest recommendations.”

Today, the eight-member team has created an organic community of more than 1,000 women across India.

In December 2022, the team also launched a full-stack customer-feedback-as-as-service application called RevuER. It offers a solution for brands that are seeking on-demand and authentic reviews and is available on both android and iOS.

“Mums can browse and select campaigns, and participate in simple tasks. Once done, they can easily use the 'withdraw' money option on the app to get their earnings. For the brands, we have an automated dash that helps create campaigns and monitor progress through their panel,” Ganguly explains.

Mishry came about as an attempt to help mums work when they could. “If you want to work 9 to 12, because your child’s school bus comes back at 12:30, then you do 9 to 12 and we would pay you industry rates for that time,” she says.

Highlighting a significant achievement, Ganguly reveals, “We are Google accelerated! In 2022, Google India announced Women Founders programme in India, and selected 20 women-led startups out of close to 400 applications. It’s an equity free accelerator—which is culminating this weekend in Bangalore with Graduation.”

Reflecting back, she shares that unlike in her previous stint in the entrepreneurial landscape, she faced certain instances that hinted at prejudice.

Being a woman founder in the food segment seemed to many a hobby project.

As someone who had always believed in paying it forward, Ganguly kept at it and continued to build the community and asks women leaders to do the same.

Advising other women, she says, “Try and build a team of women who are not afraid of negotiating salaries with you.”