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We (Vaibhav and Anshumala) met as young interns studying at NIFT at Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, Bangalore. We landed up in the same brands! Our friendship grew over project help, shared Chicken Jungli sandwiches at Chef Bakers and ice creams and a lot of mystery shopping for projects.
Weekends for us were about cooking together and hosting friends and colleagues. Post NIFT, along with Deep (Anshu’s husband), we had also planned to do a pop-up restaurant at the beautiful balcony back then. But we all thought this needed more commitment than we were ready for at 23-24. So we parked the idea and carried on with our lives.
After having a corporate run in the fashion and lifestyle sector, we both decided to pursue our MBA from Paris & Milan, respectively. During one such university break, we both decided to embark on a culinary trip to Istanbul. There we met a French tourist at Namli Gourmet, who became a part of our remaining trip to discover the city through its food while making more friends with every passing plate. Many locals hosted us at their homes over food, coffee readings, teas & Rakı.
The power of connecting people through food dawned on us both. It was a rare feeling that made every meet-up so special. And what was left behind was just tasteful memories of friendships and food. The trip left some entrepreneurial footprints behind, which blossomed into the onset of Conosh.
We did want to pursue something around local experiences back then, but we had a pile of loans and aspirations to experience luxury. After completing our MBA, Anshu started working at Bulgari in Rome, and Vaibhav started working at Louis Vuitton in Delhi.
In 2017 Delhi, Vaibhav and Neha met, at one of the events hosted by Louis Vuitton. And it was only when our conversations discussed the best years of Dom Perignon that we also found our mutual appreciation for gastronomy. Discussion on Italian and French wines led to a conversation about different cuisines & that is when we acknowledged our shared passion for food and travel.
Destiny brought us together in 2018 when Anshu visited Delhi to meet Vaibhav. We were both out for dinner at Ottimo, where Neha saw us and thought to say a casual Hi. The greetings became endless conversations. And on that table, the idea of conosh was put up!
What started as a food escapade made three budding entrepreneurs meet and discuss how to change how people eat. We kept thinking about it and couldn’t get the idea of Conosh out of our minds. For us, Conosh is all about making friends over food, creating unforgettable memories, and, more importantly, fostering a feeling of community living, which barely exists in today's isolated digital age. How many of us really know our neighbours? How many of us eat our lunches at our desks?
We say: Conosh is a way of life, Let’s Conosh!
Conosh' indeed has an interesting meaning. So 'Co' stands for conversations and community and has Latin roots, whereas 'Nosh' comes from early Yiddish and denotes a snack bar. 'Nosh' also means Food (noun), and eat food enthusiastically or greedily. Basically, Conosh is any place where you gather and create great memories over food. Nosh is also often used in Urdu, “Ayiye Nosh Farmayiye.”
Pre-covid, Conosh had been all about getting people together, over home food. We used to organise home-hosted food pop-ups and bring in people from different walks of life to socialise and meet new people over the comfort of home food. But because of Covid, we obviously had to pause all such gatherings.
While our home chefs wanted to take this time to upskill themselves, our diners had been tired of the entire week of cooking, cleaning, and, not to forget, “working from home” So we decided that till it's not safe for us to get back to home hosted experiences, let’s curate online learning experiences for whoever wants to cook and for those who need a break from week-long cooking and really look forward to some weekend pampering, let’s send them delicious curated-meals!
With many talented home chefs, Conosh is now delivering home-crafted meals to your doorsteps in Delhi & Bangalore every weekend (the cuisines range from Lebanese to Latin America, from Wazawan to Malabar. Along with our home chefs, we offer various curated meals week after week.
Conosh is also helping home chefs and home bakers upskill themselves by taking up online sessions, aka Conosh Social hours, where we collaborate with Masterchefs & industry experts and bring up new online learning experiences for our community every weekend.
These online sessions range from baking to making bread to making gourmet food at home. Some of our Social Hours stars are- Ranveer Brar, Meghna, Masterchef Kirti Bhoutika, Anna Poyviou, Sashi Cheliah, Chef Vicky Ratnani, Chef Anahita Dhondy and Sarah Todd.
Be Perfectly Flawed: Everything is a continuous learning journey. Often, things don’t work out how you would have planned them. For us, what started as wanting to build a feature-heavy APP, we literally sold via just Instagram and WhatsApp until Aug last year when we launched our very basic website. So don’t wait for the perfect product to launch. Build, test, reiterate, and test again.
Listen to your customers: We believe in being truly consumer-centric; we say truly because we have listened to each of them & taken every feedback, and evolved into who we are today. We did our first catering because our really close customer asked us to do it. We did our first wedding catering for two of our founding customers because they wanted it that way, Like imagine catering for 70-80 people where home chefs have the cooking capacity for only 15-20. It was intense to curate the menu for this wedding and such a lovely heart-warming experience. We did our first #socialhour post covid because our customer said they really wanted something positive and heard stories of others.
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