Wishing you a very happy birthday! 

I do this strange thing on my birthday every year, I wish everyone else. The logic is, my happiness is an outcome of all of you and your contributions towards it – so you are well within your rights to have abloody good day as well!  

On my birthday, I also ask myself, have I finally achieved that impossible task of being content with how my year went by? 

That answer is almost always a No. I not only question my bank balance but also my dopamine balance – have I made enough money? Or won enough awards or gained sufficient recognition this year? Ironically, it has evaded me that being content is itself a moving target. 

But this year, courtesy a LinkedIn notification I realised something new – my birthday roughly coincides with the date I first conceptualised The Bohri Kitchen and sent out the very first batch of email invitations to acquaintances to come join the Kapadia family for a meal at Colaba and experience outstanding Bohri food and the traditional bohri thaal. 

The knowledge that I will turn 31 as of 2 PM today and TBK will be 5, that I will no longer be a ’30 under 30’ and TBK will be at a respectable age for a business. The calculation, that I would have spent 1/6th of my life with TBK, Which is why I decided this year to take a step back and ask myself have I done enough to make myself proud in the last 5 years since I quit Google?Yes 🙂  

– In 5 years we created awareness for a cuisine that very few people knew about. Today, Zomato has a Bohri cuisine category, for the first time Bohri restaurants have popped up not only in Bandra but also Goa, Bangalore and Karachi. Times Food Awards has a category for best Bohri restaurant (which we’ve been winning 2 years in a row) and all of this has been possible because we’ve generated over INR 7 Crores in Organic Press coverage! 

– We went from occasionally inviting strangers home, to creating a business that justified leaving my job at Google, raised funds and advice from the biggest and baddest in the industry, grew our sales by 100%every single year since we began in 2015, built a powerful leadership team, setup 4 delivery centres and one QSR across Mumbai, standardised age old Bohri recipes and put together a supply chain that’s capable of servicing another 20 outlets across Mumbai and Pune, over night! 

– We’ve taken the Bohri thaal (& our cuisine) across the country – Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Tirur, Goa – by catering to more than 5000 guests at one time. Our clientele includes Politicians, Bollywood actors, Cricket Teams and some of the biggest names of Corporate India. 

– From barely acknowledging my mother, Nafisa Kapadia for the amazing food that I am blessed to get every single day to being overwhelmed with pride for her, as the Mom Chef behind TBK she has been recognised by a myriad number of institutions and esteemed individuals for being the real force behind our fame. Whether its Shaan wishing her a happy birthday during the Midday Rising Star awards, her being spotted frying samosas on an AirChina flight or the recognition as the Home Chef of the year by The Indian Restaurant Congress!  

– I have grown from Chief Eating Officer of a fun project with my mom to an actual Founder and CEO. I get to share my learnings at Corporates and Educational Institutions, give TedX talks, participate in interviews that are broadcast across the globe, I proudly ask the most renowned and respected investors in the country to put their hard earned capital into TBK, I call Bollywood actors and ask them for favours and I have even developed the gall to ask Politicians if I can somehow help them save the country from an environmental disaster. 

So maybe the lesson here is that I need to stop looking at life with a 1 year lens – but instead a 5 year one. Suddenly it feels like I’ve achieved a lot. Not just me, but my family, the entire team at TBK and everyone and anyone who is associated with us in any way. 

The above achievements and the upcoming ones are because of you. You read our emails, order from us, like our posts and talk about us. Which is why today I’m able to have a happy birthday – and it’s only fair that you have one as well! 

For some more of my musings please visit munafkapadia.com and to order samosas thebohrikitchen.com!