Dhaba Lane is a flavor house that is introducing Indian aromas in London and at the same time, stirring nostalgia for Indians away from home. Founded by Upma Arora and Arti Bareja, Dhaba Lane provides quality catering and delivery services of Indian Food in London.
In Upma Arora’s own words,
“Dhaba Lane, is all about bringing healthy, tasty, clean and simple home-cooked flavors to Londoners with an Indian twist at a reasonable price, with the mantra that healthy need not be boring or tasteless! Our products are prepared with fresh spices, Class A vegetables and without any preservatives and cream!”
A Journey of two Friends
Upma is an alumna of Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi. As a young student, she never liked hearing that she could not do something because she was a girl.
“I got into a bet with a friend that I will get a bike of my own in 6 months because he would not let me ride his bike because I am girl! I rode my Motorbike all over the Delhi challenging everyone who thought girls can’t ride motorbikes.”
This zeal in her later contributed in making her a fearless entrepreneur who never backed down till she reached her goals.
Upma and Arti, both students of Delhi University came to London with different dreams. As Upma describes, “Studying and working in London opens a lot of doors for you to try different things, entrepreneurship here is celebrated. We started very small from my home kitchen to try our idea and did everything on our own. We now have successfully completed a year pop up and work from a commercial kitchen. We are now looking for funding to take the business to the next level.”
Away from home, Upma and Arti missed the simple and healthy food that they had grown up eating. They could find Indian cuisine in British Curry Houses, but it was not the same. There were various falafel, burritos and noodle places in London but no healthy, fast & tasty Indian outlet. Hence the friends came up with Dhaba Lane to fill this gap in the market.
“I was passionate about starting something of my own and was fortunate to find a business partner in one of my very close friend. We identified a gap in the market for healthy, home-cooked clean and honest Indian option in London market.
Our business idea came from our strong passion to bring simple, healthy, fast and very tasty Indian food to London and create a niche in the lunchtime space for Dhaba Lane. We are inspired by dishes that feature in common Indian household every day and a strong emphasis on fresh & keeping it simple with spices to enhance the taste of food that is also healthy and balanced.”
The Start of a New Adventure
Upma was a Business Development Expert for Middlesex University. When she first told her family about her dream, like most people, her parents were worried if it’d be a wise choice to trade a stable job to venture into food business. Upma explained to them how much it meant to her, and her strong will eventually won her parents’ confidence. Dhaba Lane was self-funded, and later they raised some more amount through family and friends. Their business was on a roll, but they encountered several roadblocks on the way.
“One of the initial obstacles was to get spots at the food markets, with no background and very little funding in the business we were often rejected not because of our product not being good but because we were not cool enough or had the best branding! It took many days of sample sending, calling creating our own branding products before we started to get traction”. These were merely stepping stones for the girls, as they moved forward and realized their dreams.
A Roller Coaster Ride Of Highs And Lows
Upma talks about her experience of founding and running Dhaba Lane as challenging as well as educational. She faced a lot of ups and downs but they all contributed in making her a better entrepreneur. She looks up to Sudha Murthy, Michelle Obama and Sheryl Sandberg as her role models.
“It’s been a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. It’s very different from working for someone to starting your own business, you are responsible for every aspect, all your mistakes are yours to deal with and you have no option but to learn very fast. There are always long hours and you are never truly on a holiday but with all this comes a sense of accomplishment of starting something of your own and building a dream and that makes it all worth it!”
The Future
In coming 3 years, Upma sees Dhaba Lane as a brand with a couple of kitchens in London and aims to be recognized as a “fresh, dynamic and interactive brand of ‘Indian’ that people will associate with healthy, fast & tasty Indian food.”
She strongly believes that “if you have an idea, go for it. Research, try and sell your product wherever you can. You learn as you go along. It may be very hard, terribly exhausting and you never switch off but at the end of the day you are creating something positive! Have faith! You don’t fail, you only learn.”
Upma and Arti are recreating the image of Indian food and adding a refreshing touch to it by providing fresh and healthy variety of delicacies to please the taste buds. If you are out there in London or are planning to visit, make sure to check out their mouth-watering meals. Bon Appétit.
