Each and every morning, Dehradun’s Gurpreet Kaur would lovingly pack a nutritious lunch for her youngest daughter. However in recent years, upon returning house from college, her daughter’s tiffins looked as if it would stay untouched.
“This become a regimen. And once I would attempt to serve her some meals, she would say, ‘Mumma, I’m really not hungry’. It stunned me. How can a kid of their rising years now not be hungry all day?” asks the 45-year-old mom.
Daily, Gurpreet began noticing that her seven-year-old daughter was once getting light and occasional on power. “She was once additionally now not rising in peak and weight in comparison to her friends. She even began getting abdomen aches often,” she tells The Higher India.
In 2008, a discuss with to their circle of relatives physician printed that her daughter had celiac illness. “After an ultrasound and a few different checks, we discovered that she had evolved knots in her small gut. She had an excessively top an infection. Your next step was once a biopsy. It was once showed that her analysis was once that she had celiac illness,” she provides.
Ahead of this, Gurpreet had by no means heard of it. “The illness made her allergic to gluten. The physician informed us that the hypersensitivity may now not pass away and the one remedy to be had was once to position her on an absolutely gluten-free nutrition. An individual recognized with this illness must now not devour wheat in any respect,” she informs.
The incident driven Gurpreet to search for quite a lot of possible choices to provide her daughter. And this quest led her to start out ‘Geggle’ – a one-stop resolution corporate making gluten-free, millet-based flours, cookies, muffins, breads, and snacks.
Struggles as a mom
Ahead of venturing into entrepreneurship, Gurpreet, a BCom graduate, labored with a number of colleges as a maths and laptop trainer for 15 years. In 2018, she give up her process to appear after her circle of relatives.
All over this era, she experimented with many components. It become tricky to get a hold of recipes her daughter relished. “I’d give her besan chillas (chickpea flour pancakes), poha, idli, and dosa however she were given uninterested with consuming rice and besan each day. She sought after one thing filling, she craved wheat chapati,” says Gurpreet.
As a mom, she felt misplaced and helpless. From attending a lot of seminars, spending hours on the web researching, and assembly with diet experts and docs, to ordering gluten checking out kits from the United Kingdom – Gurpeet did all she may.
“I began ordering gluten-free flour on-line however the chapatis could be very arduous. Whilst we might have comfortable chapatis, my daughter would devour arduous ones. It was once heartbreaking for me however we had no selection,” she says.
As opposed to this, style and adulteration of the flour had been some other problem. “If she requested me to get some gluten-free cookies, I’d purchase a pack without reference to the fee. Then again, after having one or two cookies, she would quit eating them as they didn’t style excellent. I’d finally end up throwing complete packing containers after spending such a lot on them,” she provides.
In the meantime, Gurpreet may now not depend on merchandise to be had available in the market. “Wheat may also be hidden in any shape in a product. With the assistance of the checking out kits, I discovered that even condiments like ketchup and hing (asafoetida) include wheat too,” she provides.
Affiliation With BARC Catapulted Her Efforts
Ultimately, Gurpreet purchased a small milling system to make use of at house to make up for the loss of choices to be had available in the market.
It has the capability to grind 2-3 kg of components like complete grains, chickpeas, and rice. This persevered until 2020 when she met officers of Bhabha Atomic Analysis Centre (BARC) – India’s premier nuclear analysis facility – in Mumbai.
In 2019, Gurpreet’s husband were given to understand in regards to the Era Switch & Collaboration programme of BARC in the course of the Confederation of Indian Trade (CII) – a company place of business – in Dehradun. The programme gives technical technology for quite a lot of applied sciences to be had for switch in quite a lot of spectrums of science and era.
“I learnt that they have got evolved a system the usage of millets like jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet), chickpea, and psyllium husk to arrange gluten-free chapati flour. After I cooked it for my daughter, she relished it. In spite of everything, I had one thing tasty, comfortable, and nutritious to provide her. The proportions by which those components are added makes all of the distinction,” she says.
In 2021, Gurpreet signed an settlement with BARC and were given the system to mass-produce gluten-free chapati flour. Gurpreet says, “After making use of for the scheme, we were given the license to mass produce gluten-free multigrain flour premix evolved through BARC. Inspired through our goal to serve the society, BARC shared the system with us.”
In the meantime, the call for for such merchandise had additionally visibly greater. Being in contact with a lot of households suffering for gluten-free possible choices motivated her to officially release her corporate, Geggle, in September 2022.
Millet-based muffins, samosas, kulchas, and extra
“Seeing how my daughter was once thriving in this flour, our physician began recommending me to different an identical households and offering this flour to them. Ultimately, many households began visiting us and required merchandise in huge amounts,” she says.
Whilst Gurpreet began with chapati flour, nowadays she serves a variety of millet-based merchandise together with multi-grain flour, daliya and suji (wheat merchandise) replacers, rice/maize/bajra flours, tea muffins, buns, birthday party muffins, pastries, breads, or even snacks like samosas, pizzas, kulchas, and pastries for sufferers with particular hypersensitive reactions.
Up to now yr, she has been ready to generate an annual earnings of Rs 18 lakh.
Thus far, she has catered to greater than 250 other folks and will get as much as 200 orders in a month with the vast majority of consumers from towns like Dehradun, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Chandigarh, Mohali, Delhi, Roorkee, Saharanpur, Ludhiana, and Kotdwar.
Dehradun-based Preety Mohpatra who has been a common buyer of Geggle, tells The Higher India, “I’ve been getting merchandise like cookies and multi-grain flour from them for the previous seven months. The chapatis produced from their flour are very comfortable. It is usually really easy to arrange. I don’t even want to upload sizzling water when kneading the dough from this flour as in comparison to others.”
“My 10-year-old son additionally enjoys the style of it. It’s this kind of aid. In reality, at his birthday celebration, I were given gluten-free muffins, pizzas, momos, samosas and kulchas. The birthday celebration went in reality smartly,” she smiles.
It’s to assist different moms like her enjoy some aid that Gurpreet began the industry. “I will not even categorical the delight I am getting from this paintings. Oldsters thank us as their futile seek for such merchandise ends with us. After I see the ones smiles, it offers me immense excitement,” she provides.
Edited through Padmashree Pande; All pictures: Geggle