Anila’s Authentic Sauces

27.08.2006 / News & Mail

A WALTON mum hopes to turn her ‘family recipe’ curry sauces into a household brand, after winning orders from big names Bentalls and Harrods.

Anila Vaghela from Shaldon Way, started her business, Anila’s Authentic Sauces, after she was made redundant from her job as a personal assistant, in Chertsey, in 1997.

Her ventrue, which became a limited company last year, has an annual turnover of £150,000 and is set to take-off with expansion into six foreign markets in the next year.

“I started making the sauces in my kitchen at home nine year ago, but the idea actually came to me before that in 1992.” Anila said, “I was making curries for my family and kept getting requests from my work colleagues to bring some in. So I steralised a few jars, filled them with sauces and put a memo around the office. People bought them for £1.50 a jar and loved them, so I knew I was onto something.”

Anila was a secretary at precision laser printer firm, Zed Instruments, in Molesey Road, Hersham, at the time and later moved on to Sycamore Taverns, based in Guildford Street, Chertsey. When redundancy called time on the job, she decided to research the curry sauce market and decided there was an opening for home-made sauces on sale at farmers’ markets.

Anila, who was taught to cook Indian food as a child by her mother and grandmother, enlisted the help of husband, Dan and her son Viren and daughter Vanisha, now 25 and 23, to carry out blindfolded taste tests. This helped her decide which products were the most popular and she new sells seven varieties of curry sacues and 11 types of chutney and pickles, using traditional recipes and new ideas.

Anila started out making the curry sauces form home in batches of 25, to be sold at farmers’ markets, and plucked up the courage to send samples to a buyer at Bentalls.

She said: “He phoned me up and said he’d never tasted curries like it in his life and he wanted them for the store. I was in my house and I could have screamed for joy. They even got me in to do taste tests with the customers.”

Orders from Fortnum and Mason of Piccadilly and Harrods followed and some 400 UK delicatessens and farm shops sell her products, including local retailers Garsons Farm in Esher, and Crockford Bridge Farm shop in Addlestone.

She also exhibits at 28 shows and markets a month, with help from friend Rushna Master of Walton, who met her at a fair in Cobham and offered to assist with the sales.

Anila, born in Zimbabwe, came to Britain in 1977 and said she loves selling in this country because “people in England are the biggest curry fans in the world.”

She now cooks her sauces at premises in Hounslow, Middlesex, where she employs three staff and produces between 1,200 and 1,500 jars a week. She works a seven day week and makes her way to the International market in Southall, at 6am twice a week to buy fresh ingredients.

Anila added: “I start my day with an hour’s meditation before going to the market. Sometimes I don’t finish work until 6pm or 7pm, but I don’t mind because I’m so passionate about what I do.”

Although these days a lot of my time is taken up by paperwork, I love cooking and being a secretary was so boring. I’m much happier now.”

Anila also sells her wares on the internet with receips to help householders get the best results. It is at www.anilassauces.com