Our Story

My son was about 5 months and I was beginning to think about introducing solids. I wanted something traditional & healthy yet quick & easy to make at home. But to my surprise I found most of the foods available were filled with excess sugar, maltodextrin, milk powder, artificial flavors, colors etc.

I decided to never feed my son these boxes of food. But was that a good solution? What about other babies who were eating them because their parents had not other option or were not aware about the harmful effects of these additives?

This very thought triggered me to think of bringing back traditional baby food recipes that were made just like how our grandmas made it for us!

Of course, I did not create Early Foods all by myself. My mother was my pillar of strength. Right from deciding the best recipes, to physically working out how to soak, sprout, roast and create a final recipe –she has been there.

As Early Foods grew, she became my co-founder, managing the staff, new recruitment, procuring high quality ingredients, improvising the production, and also sharing jokes with all our staff etc.

She was about 60+ when she helped start Early Foods. I am her only child, but today with Early Foods she tells me she has 25+ children to take care of. And you know what, sometimes in our arguments she always supports our staff more than me :-P

“Food technologists used to tell me add “glucose syrup”, itmakes the biscuit crunchier and sweeter at a cheaper price. Add raising agents,you will get 20 cookies instead of 10 for the same pack! Oh, Common Add a little bit of Maida, it will make the cookies cheaper and you ll get more volume.” So on.. And if I did so, I could never feed these food products to my son. So how could I confidently tell other mom’s to feed their kids?

This exact clarity of thought helped us innovate snack recipes that no one could commercially make. But Early Foods did 😊and I am so proud of our recipes that I happily feed my son & yours kids too.

I am extremely fussy, doubtful and irritatingly picky about the foods I choose for my family. And I understand new parents would be equally doubtful about the safety, genuineness of Early Foods products too.

And that is why we send random samples of our own products to be tested for over 200+parameters every quarter. This includes 10 heavy metals, 150+ pesticides residues, artificial flavours, colours, raising agents & preservatives.

These reports not just help you trust Early Foods, but also helps us keep an eye on our raw material suppliers 😊

Entrepreneurship is not just about the company’s success& growth, but its also the ability to raise the standards of everyone involved in the company.

Today, Early Foods empowers the lives of 25+ women Lohegaon, Pune. Most of them have not even completed 10th grade and were so shy, low in confidence. But today, all our staff are financially independent enough to even support their husbands’ career, loans, etc.  But most importantly, they are now able to fund their child’s education proudly.

The years of training have made them experts to handle machineries, electrical malfunctioning, create invoices, operate Amazon databases, read & write more confidently, and most importantly look upon themselves with a lot of dignity & self-respect!

In 4 Years, Early Foods was able to not just prove itself of a good business model, but was being recognized for the rural empowerment & overall healthy impact on the society for creating organic food products for moms & kids.

In 2019, Early Foods won the National Entrepreneurship Award by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India!

Our extensive use of organic millets for processed food production got us recognized by IIMR, Indian Institute of Millet Research & the Govt of Karnataka.

Early Foods received the Industrious Start-up Award in 2019.

I started Early Foods with a mission to help kids eat better!

And each day, I receive so many thank you notes, photos, videos from parents of how their kids not only enjoy our food, but also have helped them become more immune and gain weight too.

Seeing these pictures of beautiful healthy kids, I am just so grateful to God for showing me this path to work on.

God Bless You All!

Love,

Shalini Santhosh Kumar