Purusharth Jamwal, a marine engineering graduate and entrepreneur, helps makers of artisanal food products who have limited access to markets and whose businesses were hit hard by the Covid pandemic.
On a warm summer day, a food truck pulls onto a spot by the winding road outside Ghandal village, 21km north of Shimla. A couple of cars carrying tourists going for shindigs in Himachal Pradesh stop for a quick snack of instant noodles – the popular, get-at-able comfort food of the Himalayan hills.
Fun-loving families mill around the small truck, chatting and laughing while they wait for their food orders. Some soak in the scenery and others survey mason jars labelled and filled with homemade pickles, chutneys and jams unique to Himachal, laid out on a framework below the counter window. Squash and syrup of rhododendron flowers and local fruits are sold too.
The visitors hurriedly eat their food, sip their tea or coffee, take a few pickle jars, pick up the tab, and press on. Another bunch of visitors swing by and the routine repeats.
Such pit stops are a familiar sight near food trucks in Himachal, where small businesses on wheels are dime a dozen and continue to pop up in unusual places as vacationers tired of touristy hill stations seek out offbeat nooks.
But the van, named Food Truck Wala, of Purusharth Jamwal, a young Ghandal native, serves more than noodles, omelettes, parathas, hot and cold beverages, and “siddu” – a Himachali fermented steamed bun eaten with a side dish of fresh mint chutney or dal.
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Jamwal’s truck is an extension of his company, Himachal Hills, which markets packaged food sourced directly from more than 200 rural women spread across the state. These women are either attached to self-help groups that aid the state’s thriving food-processing cottage industry or are small-time home entrepreneurs.
Either way, most of these women don’t have access to markets and finance. Himachal Hills is helping them fill that gap and proceeds from the sales are remitted to these women.
“We feel really good. The things we create with our own hands are liked so much by people. They are coming from far and wide to buy what we make. Thanks to this initiative today our handmade products are in the market and serve as a source of income for us,” said Reena Devi.
Jamwal is a graduate of marine engineering from Tolani Maritime Institute in Mumbai. After graduation, he had two choices: join the lucrative merchant navy with a fat pay package or listen to the call of the mountains and home to return.
He chose the second, unable to resist the yearning to be near his folks and help them out after living away from them for years in hostels for his education. But the mountains offer little in terms of livelihood, other than agriculture and tourism.
Again, Jamwal chose the second to pivot his business. The idea came from his mother back in 2018 when she started selling Kangra tea sourced from her brother’s tea gardens to her friends.
Her late-blooming entrepreneurship befuddled the family, but the reason she gave settled the debate: she wanted to do something on her own and that brought her joy. Her business expanded from friends to the neighbourhood, and eventually local retailers.
Around the same time, Indu and her husband Mehar Singh Jamwal came across a scheme for self-help groups in rural areas that assisted women in earning money from homemade organic products, such as honey and pickles.
Women have been making these products for ages. In fact, the fiery, tangy and spicy “chukh” chutney made of ripe-red Chitrali chillies of Chamba valley and tempered with mustard oil and local citrus fruits is a fine example.
But a host of obstacles held back many enterprising women in far-flung villages from making a business out of their family recipes. Lack of access to markets, difficulties in getting a food licence, and cheap factory-made products were some of them.
Their son was then in his second year of college and they told him about the difficulties rural women face. He saw an opportunity in the lack of one to help rural women.
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“We don’t have a job, but this skill of crafting is in our hands. And if we can earn a few pennies from it, there can be no greater happiness for us than this, right in our own homes,” said Sita Sharma, another dedicated woman associated with the Himachal Hills.
After his return, young Jamwal set out on his goal and contacted a host of rural women. They reported back positively. These women were selling their products to retailers, but the coronavirus pandemic choked their source of income. Payments never came on time, and often not at all.
But a silver lining appeared when Jamwal’s sister Ishana Rajput suggested the idea of a food truck to sell the products. Food trucks appeal to entrepreneurs because they cost less than restaurants and shops to open. Plus, they allow mobility, which in turn affords a bigger audience.
Jamwal’s food truck was a do-it-yourself, cost-cutting project: from design to welding. He got the food licence made and launched Himachal Hills.
He hired Sunil Rawat and his wife, Bhawana, to operate Food Truck Wala, the mobile eatery whose main purpose is to sell artisanal products from across Himachal – chukh from Chamba, jam, jellies and juices from Shimla, organic honey from Una, pickles from Kangra.
The list goes on, as does Jamwal’s optimism and satisfaction in bringing joy to many hardworking women in isolated, mountainside villages. “This is a journey of transforming a few lives if not many,” he said, as a happy bunch on a Maggi break trains their eyes on the pickle jars.
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The lead image at the top shows Purusharth Jamwal alongside the Food Truck (Photo by Savvy Thakur)
Savvy Thakur is a student of National Law University, Shimla situated in Ghandal.
