This Senior Entrepreneur Is Preserving Tradition With Her Pickle Project

Senior entrepreneur Purobi Kagti's Pickle Project blends family tradition and her memories of Assam.

Purobi Kagti’s pickles grace several dining tables in Bengaluru. The 76-year-old senior entrepreneur relocated to the city to be with her daughter in 2014 and was eager to embark on a new project to keep herself busy. During her years in Assam, Kagti crafted beautiful handpainted saris and traditional Assamese sarongs called Mekhela Chadors. Keen to put her creativity to use, she teamed up with daughter Shivani Kagti to explore pickle-making, an area she was well-versed in. The result was Pickle Project, a homegrown company that sold pickles, inspired by Kagti’s time in a remote village in Assam where she ran a tea estate with her husband. Frequent power outages sparked the necessity and passion for the art of food preservation and pickling.

At the tea estate, Kagti perfected the art of pickling various meats and vegetables and discovered innovative techniques to preserve food. With a strong influence from Assamese cuisine, the Pickle Project ensures all the ingredients are hand-picked and the spices freshly ground; including spices such as panchphoron, a spice blend from Eastern India. The recipes abstain from chemical preservatives and Kagti attributes the knowledge of these recipes to her mother and mother-in-law. She also draws her inspiration from her upbringing in Assam. Some recipes are cherished heirlooms within her family and hold a beloved spot. Pork pickle, Chilli in yellow mustard and the sweet and tangy tomato relish are customer favourites and find their roots in the days when surplus meat from the family’s boar hunting adventures was preserved through pickling. 

Kagti and Shivani believe in crafting everything freshly and in small batches. They promote their products through flea markets, including the popular Sunday Soul Sante, and various pop-up events across the city. Through these platforms, they have successfully cultivated a loyal customer base who continue to place repeat orders. Products are shipped to customers across Bengaluru with delivery apps like Dunzo and Telyport.

Recently, Kagti and Shivani teamed up with five like-minded creators to establish the Busy Fingers Collective, an initiative that Silver Talkies member Madhu Mehra is also part of. This collaborative effort enables them to showcase their creations at various venues throughout the city. The Busy Fingers Collective includes independent artists dedicated to the celebration of handcrafted work and promoting indigenous art and craft traditions. With six local brands including the Pickle Project, each product they put out is a labour of love. These range from sustainably made soft toys, smocked dresses, embroidered clothing,  knitted accessories, sterling jewellery silver jewellery, homemade pickles, and natural dye textiles.

Being a small home-based business Kagti maintains minimal overhead costs. Their main expenditure revolves around buying ingredients and bottles. Another significant expense involves securing stalls at exhibitions where they typically sell between 200 to 300 bottles depending on the event’s footfall. They offer samples allowing people to savour their pickles before making a purchase. The duo initially launched six pickle varieties and has since expanded to ten distinct options including Tomato, Brinjal, Chilli Mustard, Hot and Sweet Chilli, Mango, Sour Mango, Cabbage, Lemon, Chicken and Pork. Customer favourites in the vegetarian range have proven to be the Tomato and Brinjal and among the non-vegetarian range, the Pork pickle shines through.

The Pickle Project is a labour of love and it has helped to have creative family around. “We realised that apart from having a good product, it is important to package it attractively. Hence, we sought the help of friends and family members,” said Kagti’s daughter Shivani candidly. Tridiv Das, a family member who heads a creative agency in Bengaluru designed their logos and labels free of charge. Purobi’s eldest daughter Julie has played a pivotal role in the final packaging of their bottles. Family support and contributions have been instrumental in enhancing the visual appeal and aesthetics of their brand.

The other factor that helped has been social media for brand discovery and customer engagement. Shivani manages their social media presence through the Instagram account @pickleproject.blore and it has helped the customers who tasted their pickles at pop-up events to come back looking for more. 

With such an unusual repertoire of pickles, we hope Purobi Kagti is dreaming up more flavours of pickles! 

All images courtesy: Purobi and Shivani Kagti