Say It With Chocolate

My father is a business man and my mother an accountant. By profession I am a Physiotherapist and was  a practitioner for 9 years until decided to venture into something new and different. Moreover,I had attended a course and thought it would be an interesting venture due to the demand for good chocolate and especially dairy free chocolate.

When I started, I had no idea what the market research was, neither did I know if it would work or not. I had a gut instinct and went with it. In addition, I had very few believers in my product at that time. I started with small 10g chocolates selling 5 for ksh 200 at the farmer’s markets, and it is from these markets that I got my very first break – a corporate order. To say I was over the moon was an understatement.

However, I hit a drawback – they wanted boxes and I had no money to purchase the boxes that they wanted. My dad took a chance on me and loaned me the down payment for the boxes, and the owner of the box manufacturing company, Mr Harjinder SIngh, was kind enough to provide with me a payment plan for those boxes. And thus started my journey.

From the little boxes of chocolates, I then decided to venture into chocolate bars and started with 4 types – this was in January 2016. I am now working on up to 52 flavors for the markets. In terms of packaging, I originally had no idea where to source wrapping paper and so I started with wrapping paper from the supermarket and then progressed to different types of wrapping and it is still evolving. I took baby steps, but never stopped.

There were times it was hard, difficult and almost seeming impossible, but I had people around me who believed in me and told me to keep going at it. And I still am!!

Jazeera Suwani