Chennai: Being an IT employee, Prashanth spends the first half of his day daily by sitting in front of a system, and working hard for his employer. However once his shift gets over he gets home and makes himself busy holding the sundal karandi in one hand and calling the customers to taste the home-made traditional evening snack being sold at a stall by him.
A resident of Mylapore, Prashanth started selling sundal and other traditional snacks like Pidi Kozhukattai, Uppu Adai and Kesari just outside his house at CP Koil Street, three months ago. What started out as a hobby soon became successful as Prashanth has garnered many regular customers. On a busy evening when the sales were going well for him, News Today caught up with Prashanth for a chat.
Speaking about why he decided to do start this business, he said, “I always had an idea of starting a business apart from the regular IT job that I do. I was discussing about it for quite sometime with my near and dear ones and was asking suggestions from them. But soon I decided to offer something that is hygienic to the people and zeroed in on selling sundal and other traditional home-made snacks. After getting the nod from my family members, I started this exactly on the day of Vinayagar Chathurthi this year.”
Prashanth first started by selling two varieties of sundal to see the response of the public. But soon it became overwhelming and he started selling other items like pidi kozhukattai, kesari, groundnut and sprouts which costs not more than Rs 20.
Speaking about his customers he says, “Within few weeks of starting this, I began getting very good response. Since there are lot of shops around, most of the shopkeepers come here and get the items packed and they say this is very helpful. I have got nearly 40 people who are regular customers.”
“Everyday there will be either white or black sundal. In addition to it, there will be either sprouts or groundnut. All of these will be made at a volume of one kg. We will also make 150 pieces of pidi kozhukattai everyday. Every Friday, there will be some sweet that we offer. Every Saturday, jaggery kozhukattai will be made and kept for sale. All of it costs not more than Rs 20. Since we dont have enough manpower we can do only limited items that we could sell for nearly three hours,’ says Prashanth about the items that he sells. ‘We serve it in Mantharai leaf and pack it with a newspaper as we don’t want to use plastics,” he adds.
Asked about the support he gets from his family, he says, “My father, mother and wife were very supportive when I came up with the idea. My mother is the one who is giving us a very big hand as she does the cooking. My father does the purchasing and he is also the one who prepared the boards that display the items that we sell. I and my wife look after the sales everyday.”
“We are keeping ourselves busy with this rather than sitting simply at home after work. After sitting in front of the system at our workplace for eight hours, meeting different people here at the evening gives a new feel and energy,” concludes Prashanth.