Nei or ghee is an integral part of Indian cuisine. A few spoons, and flavours of the cuisine springs to life. While the market is flooded with all kinds of ghee, nothing comes close to the aroma, texture, and flavour that a good homemade ghee has to offer. Mumbai resident Nitya Ganapathy realised this gap in the market and jumped on the opportunity using her mother Jayalakshmi Ganapathy's recipe.
She launched her company 'Nei Native' in 2021. Today, she earns around Rs 10 lakh monthly. He informs that while most entrepreneurs do their research work and due diligence into the market before entry, she dived straight in. The reason the brand got so much appreciation was because of the top-notch quality that it offers, according to Nitya.
The company uses the traditional bilona method to make the ghee. Although it is laborious and time-consuming, the flavour makes up for all the effort that it requires. As part of the process, full cream A2 milk is first boiled in a large pot over wood-fire. Once the milk is boiled, it is allowed to cool down before being transferred into an earthen pot. The milk is then allowed to curd and rest overnight in a cool place. The curd is churned using a wooden ladle to make it into butter. This butter is then carefully separated from the rest of the buttermilk.
Using an uruli (traditional south Indian brass vessel), the butter is heated on a slow flame. The ghee obtained after this stage is strained and stored in glass jars ready to be distributed after a quality check. To get one litre of nei, it takes approximately 25 to 30 litres of full-cream milk, says Nitya.
When she had just begun in May 2021, she was shipping around six to eight orders a day. Presently, the number has increased to about 90, which is around 2,500 jars a month. In the market dominated by processed ghee, homemade biloni desi ghee is refreshing product in the market. Indeed every spoon of bilona desi ghee will enhance not just your epicurean delights but also nurture and nourish your body, mind, and soul.