From BANG! To boom: A late-blooming business journey

From solving complex equations in a lab to creating delicious curry kits in her kitchen, Shelly Nuruzzaman’s career took an unexpected turn in her 40s.

With a PhD in hand but seeking a new purpose, Shelly swapped her lab coat for an apron, using her scientific expertise to inspire her culinary innovations.

Determined to bootstrap her business, she personally tested recipes and built her business and website from the ground up. Her efforts paid off, achieving a multi-6-figure turnover and selling over 750,000 kits within the first 5 years.

Discover how BANG! Curry has made its way into kitchens worldwide, amassing millions of likes and views on social media, securing a best-seller spot on Amazon, and earning a nationwide listing with Waitrose.

Here’s her unfiltered advice below:

• Cooking up BANG! Curry
• Assessing the risk and return
• Starting with £0 budget
• Filling the product gap for HelloFresh
• The overlaps between science and business
• Studying in a 99% male dominated field
• Your belief in your business will carry you through hard times
• Use Amazon reviews to boost sales
• How to get people to leave reviews
• Become resilient to feedback and use it to improve
• Make your product versatile
• Competition proves that there is demand in your market
• Keeping new product ideas fresh and flowing
• Use paid classes as a way to bootstrap your business
• Figuring out how to give the best value for money
• Growing up in Brick Lane surrounded by flavoursome food
• Engineering a sustainable brand
• Being authentic will win you retailers
• Building out your business into multiple functions and products

Cooking up BANG! Curry

Bex Burn-Callander:

I’m really excited to talk about this business. I’ve had my mouth watering ever since I read about it, so you’ll have to take us through how you dreamt up this wonderful brand.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Well, it really did come after motherhood, as many things do.

After the children were born and lots of time in the kitchen, whereas I didn’t really spend that much time in the kitchen before that.

All of a sudden, I was thinking about what was going into their tummies and thinking about nutrition, whereas before I was out in restaurants and just whizzing together meals quite easily and not taking that much care of it.

But I was really thinking about what and how to make these beautiful dishes that my mum would make for us as children and evoke those childhood memories back again.

And growing up with my mum, who’s an absolute amazing cook, she’s such a perfectionist, and I used to follow her around the kitchen.

So after the children, it just brought back all those childhood memories and the times that I would watch my mum cook in the kitchen.

And I used to come up with my own little hacks, because I never understood what she did, because there were over a dozen different ingredients that she would play around with.

And so to satisfy my curiosity and to get me involved in the kitchen because as a 9, 10-year-old, you can pretty much make a bit of a mess. But she encouraged it. She didn’t say no.

She’d get a little bowl and then she would portion out all the different flavourings, the spices and the herbs, and she’d create that little spectrum for me to go and play with.

And so that was kind of the memory that sparked the whole premise of BANG! Curry and those teachings that mum gave me.

And yeah, I just thought, “You know what? I can do something with this.” And it’s a range that was put together to help share and promote that curry-making experience with other people.

Assessing the risk and return

Bex Burn-Callander:

You paint such an evocative picture. And in fact, I remember being a kid and always smelling chopped onions and garlic on my mum’s fingers because she spent a lot of time cooking.

She worked full time, but on the weekends, and that was the special time smelling the tomatoes, cooking in the kitchen. So I know exactly what you mean.

But then it’s quite a big jump from being someone on a salary and you were working as a quant at the time, so you were a financial analyst, to then sort of risking it all on an untried business.

Perhaps you could talk me through your thought process when it came to actually taking the jump.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

So being a quant and being in that business, you are very measured about risk and return, it was part of my daily routine, and it threads through everything that I did as part of my role at the various jobs that I had as a quant analyst.

And so when it comes to risk and return, I’m not averse to it at all, as long as it’s measured.

When BANG! came along, I’d had lots of ideas before, but nothing jumped out of me with such instinct and such resolution that I had no doubts whatsoever.

And I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, I did a gross profit, quick calculation.

At the time I felt it couldn’t go wrong. There was a huge gap in the market. I saw an opportunity, and it was pretty much who’s going to get there first? And so yeah, I got busy very quickly. It was a no-brainer.

Starting with £0 budget

Bex Burn-Callander:

And how much did you have in the startup pot? What was the budget that you thought, “Right, I can get going with this”?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Zero. It was pretty much zero, honestly.

I started very much organically, and it was all part of the weekly shop. I would experiment. My poor children and family had to eat curry pretty much more frequently than usual.

So I incorporated it at first, I would say for about a year, perfecting those recipes, understanding whether there was an appetite for it. So I did do a decent amount of market research.

And so when I started to raise finance for it, it was through cookery classes. And so that’s when I got a bit of a pot. And so we call that bootstrapping, when you make something and then you reinvest it back in.

And it was like that for a few years until we got our first contract with HelloFresh, and we were spotted after being in farmer’s food markets for about 6 months.

So it all started with the cookery classes, teaching people how to make some basic recipes that I’ve known along the way.

I’ve taught friends and family, the basics, like a dhal, a tarka dhal, a biryani, and madras, and bhajis. These are really well-known favourites that I’ve taught over and over and over again, and took them through the cookery classes to really market test whether it’s something worth pursuing.

And yes, we turned it into a product, some basic products, went to markets, farmer’s markets locally, there was Chiswick, Barnes, some in Clapham.

We did quite a few, actually. It was fun. It was really fun. And then we stopped when it stopped being fun because it coincided with getting on the shelves at Whole Foods Market and it was just before the pandemic.

And until we got our contract with HelloFresh, which I’m so proud of, and it really is what launched the brand, we then went out to get a little bit of investment. It wasn’t much.

My mum pretty much loaned us £10,000 in order to scale up the operations, and I was able to buy a piece of machinery.

And lucky for me, Mark’s a manufacturing engineer. He’s a whiz with mechanics and electronics and everything of that sort. So between us, we were able to hire an industrial unit out locally to us, which is an ActOn.

We took this machine, rewired it. It was pretty industrial and it’s a big blender mixer machine. And that was the start of BANG! where we did some really big-scale production.

I have to say, since then, that was a long time ago, we don’t produce anything ourselves anymore.

We did it the hard way, but I think there’s a real benefit from doing that because you understand the ins and outs of production. So yeah, so our first injection was the £10,000.

Bex Burn-Callander:

That sounds so exciting though, buying this enormous machine and standing there in this sort of industrial space staring at this enormous thing for grinding and mixing.

How exciting that must’ve been, that moment, because that must’ve felt so real to you then, out of the kitchen and into this business space.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

It was literally out of my home kitchen and into this stainless-steel machine. It was pretty surreal, I have to admit it. It was a real moment.

And then seeing the recipes getting accolades on the HelloFresh website, having the head chef ring me and ask me for the next recipe, discussing ingredients. Yeah, it was a good time.

Filling the product gap for HelloFresh

Bex Burn-Callander:

Did you have any idea you would go the recipe kit route in terms of finding a partner to launch you in that way? Or was that just a happy accident? How did that conversation with HelloFresh come about?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

I kind of sought it out. I could see a real analogy between what we were doing and what the idea behind BANG! was and what Hello HelloFresh were doing out in the marketplace.

So at the time, HelloFresh were quite big in the US, but in the UK they’d just started out. And I think they’re a bit of a franchise, aren’t they, they’re all over the world.

But in the UK at the time, they weren’t really that hot on curry. They didn’t have many curry recipes or they didn’t have any. And so I stepped in.

I think it was a bit of luck actually, because obviously I know what I’m talking about when it comes to the curry recipes, and it kind of matched with their needs at the time.

And so I gave them a really good solution to something to add to their repertoire. So I wouldn’t say it was an accident, but it was one of many opportunities I’d pursued and it came through.

Bex Burn-Callander:

That’s amazing. You have to think sometimes quite laterally about routes to market. So it’s great to hear your story of finding someone that’s almost a springboard into people’s homes and their pallets. It’s so interesting.

The overlaps between science and business

Bex Burn-Callander:

And then I’m interested to know, because you were a physics PhD, so what skills do you feel you’ve brought from working in the lab at Imperial College?

Is there an overlap, I suppose when you’re putting together spice kits, because it is sort of like a science, right?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Physics is an incredible subject, it’s all about problem solving, it’s highly analytical, it’s very creative, and that’s something I didn’t recognise before.

And I really see a parallel between the techniques that I used in the lab, whether they’re optics or lenses, mirrors, light, all of those things.

I guess I swapped out for spice ingredients and herbs and the tolerances behind each measurement and getting to those trials and reducing trials from 200 to 50 rather than 200 to 120.

It was an easier route to get there using the techniques that I’ve learned through science. And it was really surprising.

Bex Burn-Callander:

So traditionally, you’ve come full circle, and you are disrupting tradition almost by coming all the way around 360.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Yeah, that’s right, actually. If we think about the disruption that BANG! is causing in its category, I’m really proud of that.

I just wanted to blow away the conceptions of what people call curry now. And it sounds so minor, but actually I feel really passionate about it because the cuisine itself and what I grew up with is not what you find in the shops.

I find it a little bit almost insulting to the consumer to give them something like this that is not flavoursome, it’s not healthy, it’s not involving the consumer in the whole cooking process.

What we do is to help to involve that person in the enjoyment in the kitchen, to evoke the pride and healthiness of this way of cooking. Not to mention all the sustainability that goes along with our range.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Well, we’ll come back to the sustainability, but I’m interested in what you’re saying about giving people part of the experience of cooking and being involved in the process.

Because there is a magic, isn’t there, when the spices hit the pan and you get the aromas releasing, it’s almost like a heady moment where you’re getting carried away with what you’re about to eat. So it’s like theatre, right?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

It is. It’s very much like theatre. And honestly, I’ll never tire of using BANG! at least on a 2 weekly basis and every time think, “Yeah, this is good. This happened really quick, and it saved me so much effort.”

Studying in a 99% male dominated field

Bex Burn-Callander:

I wanted to hear more about your experiences studying physics.

You said something really interesting there about being the only woman in the college. Being an outlier like that must’ve been quite challenging at times. Was it?

Did that teach you to be quite resilient as a person, and have you been able to pull those, I suppose, characteristics that you built within the lab, pull them through into your entrepreneurial journey?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Imperial is well known, when I was there, it was well known for being 99% percent male, and I was the only female, definitely in the Blackett Lab, we called it, which is opposite the Royal Albert Hall. It’s a very nice place to study.

And I didn’t really focus on being the only female. I understood that I had to perform a lot better, or I was being scrutinised because I was female, but the way I coped with it was just to get on with it and let that be a you problem if you like, and I just carried on and just did what I was there to do.

If I focused on that too much, I think it would’ve detracted me from the enjoyment and the reason I was there, because you can’t do a physics PhD for any other reason apart from your love of the subject.

That’s the only thing that will drive you through because it’s tough. There’s not really much financial reward. It’s all about achievement and seeking what you’re looking for.

Your belief in your business will carry you through hard times

Bex Burn-Callander:

And then when you did the pivot into becoming a business owner, a recipe maker, you were in your 40s, you’ve mentioned you’d had kids by that point.

Did that feel like a lot of pressure to make it work, because presumably you had financial responsibilities. You’re not a footloose, fancy-free 20-year-old with nothing to lose.

And how did that, I guess, influence your journey? Was that pressure actually quite motivating so that you had to be successful?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

I think you spot on there, actually. Yeah, there was a lot of pressure involved because I’d come from such a high achieving background, I guess, in terms of the other fields I was involved with.

And I was well aware of the opinions that maybe some people may have had like “What on earth is she doing? What’s that got to do with anything scientific or financial or quantitative?”

But again, I just carried on because I knew I had something, so that belief obviously carried me through those hard times.

And it was difficult because I didn’t have a wage to rely on, a constant stream, and I couldn’t ring up IT when I needed help. It is all about solving everything yourself.

You’re a one-man band for quite some time, and it was difficult, but then the small wins along the way, that’s what keeps you going.

Use Amazon reviews to boost sales

Bex Burn-Callander:

And tell me about some of those small wins.

So we talked about HelloFresh and how that parachuted you into the big time, well into the small big time. And then what did you do next? How did you build on that momentum to keep growing the brand, winning new customers? What were the next wins on the list?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Well, it was all about getting the name out there, being seen. Micro influencers is what we used quite heavily. Amazon was a big brand awareness winner for us.

Now I mentioned that we started pretty much the whole scaling of our online business through the pandemic.

So we made a good choice by just coming out of retail and concentrating everything online. So we decided to go online, we created our own website, which I clumsily developed in the first days.

We fast evolved from there, but it worked, it was fine, and we launched onto Amazon. We actually even launched into Amazon EU before we couldn’t trade in EU anymore.

And that’s what really helped us, and we escalated our sales there mainly through reviews, and making sure our customers came back and reviewed our products, because reviews are everything.

And it’s the social media that ties in. It’s all one big marketing loop, if you like. It all tells that story, and one piece doesn’t work without the other.

So it was fast learning how all those different channels work together. It’s quite complicated, but once you get your head around it, I think online was where we really started to establish ourselves in the beginning.

How to get people to leave reviews

Bex Burn-Callander:

And how did you get people to leave reviews? Because that’s just like the silver bullet, isn’t it? If you can get people to say that they’re happy, people are so happy to tell you when they’re annoyed or when something hasn’t met expectations, but to get them to take the time to say this was great, that’s hard. How did you do that?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Well, we took the effort of having direct contact.

We’d have people that actually did the customer service. We automated the process of asking for reviews in a clever way, but not in an illegal way, because Amazon’s got some quite stringent rules.

It was time-consuming but worth it, because even just the 1 review makes such a big difference on the stats. And we made sure we looked at customer feedback.

So all of those things really impacted the future NPD of our products. So we listened, and I think we need to listen to make sure we continually improve what we are giving. So that’s how we did it.

Become resilient to feedback and use it to improve

Bex Burn-Callander:

And how did you react to feedback? Because in the world of curry, I can imagine you’ve got this spectrum of people when it comes to spice, some say tiny bit is too much and some are like blow my head off. How on earth do you cater to all of those people at once?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

You know what, that’s a great question actually, because I think I developed my resilience to it all when I was on the market stall right at the beginning.

Because I’d have people say to me, “Oh, it’s too spicy,” and I didn’t understand because spicy isn’t in my vocabulary.

I was saying, “What does that mean? Too spicy?” But it literally means heat, and I wasn’t aware of that.

So I got accustomed to different ways of describing the flavours. And because we have quite a big range that caters for every taste, if you like, I was always able to direct somebody to a different flavour.

And you know what? Every flavour is not for everyone. And I soon learned to not get offended.

Obviously, it’s very personal to me because I’ve developed them all from scratch, but you can’t make everyone happy. But I’m happy to say that most people are really delighted when they use what we are doing.

And if they’re not, then I really try and dissect how they use the product because there may be something not quite right in how we’re communicating the use of them. So I’m quite stringent about those things.

Make your product versatile

Bex Burn-Callander:

And how do you get people to buy again and again? Because it seems like when you create a kit like this, you want it to be on the rotation, like when you’re doing your meal prep, as you say, maybe every couple of weeks there it is, BANG! Curry on the rotation.

So how do you stay in people’s minds? Just refresh them, “Remember we’re here, we’re tasty.” How do you do that? How do you get repeat purchases?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

So we try to give inspiration. So we want BANG! to be a way of life, not just a product that you use and get bored with. It’s the versatility that we are giving people and the empowerment to do what they want to do with their meals.

And if you’ve got dietary requirements, if you’ve got ingredient preferences, you don’t like meat or you just love vegan-type ingredients, there’s always something for that person, and we want to inspire with lots of different recipes that they can use with just the 1 kit.

You can vary it up, but you know you’ve got your flavour locked in, and I think that’s why people come back. They don’t get bored.

They’ll buy it once and they know they can change it up a bit and it will go down well when they take that effort to put some time into it and make it.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Is that through social media? Are you sharing sort of, “Hey, look, you can use this kit for an exciting barbecue dish, or have you tried using paneer, or…”

How do you show them another way to use it and how do you keep refreshing that? Is it like TikTok videos? How are you doing it?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

We are doing it pretty much through social media. That’s very instant, and sharing recipes. We’ve got recipes on our website.

And now we are with Waitrose, they are also starting to showcase some of our recipes. It’s still early days, but on the horizon, we’ve got some lovely recipes that are going to appear in their weekend magazines, and it’s through those platforms that we like to keep on refreshing those recipes.

And because that’s what it’s about, right? Everyone gets bored with the same old weekday meals or even if someone’s coming round, how do I knock something together quickly and everyone’s happy?

We like to solve that problem and make mealtimes exciting.

Competition proves that there is demand in your market

Bex Burn-Callander:

And tell me about what the competitor landscape looks like now.

Because you were obviously doing something at the beginning of what became quite a big wave of recipe kits and different kinds of kits focusing on different kinds of cuisines, and there’s now quite a lot of curry kits out there.

How do you stand out, and has that brought more awareness to the category as a whole? Is that a good thing, or has it sort of stolen some of your customers?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

The way I see it is that I would rather not be the only product in a category and be carving that out because frankly, we have been carving that category out and it’s hard.

It’s difficult when you are having to convince buyer after buyer that you have a consumer group out there that are crying out for this type of product.

So I’m actually really pleased, because it proves our point that there’s a demand for it, and actually, competition’s good.

We are quite confident, quietly confident with our range and that we can stand up to it.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And you don’t want to waste too much time looking at the competition. You want to just be focusing on the next thing.

Keeping new product ideas fresh and flowing

Bex Burn-Callander:

And tell me about that. How frequently do you bring out new products? Is there a lot of pressure to have this pipeline of NPD constantly going, going?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

That is the most exciting part. Honestly, it’s just what I live for, NPD and the next thing and coming up with new ideas and making them just come to life.

In the beginning, it literally took 18 months for that first recipe to be perfect. Now, using all of those scientific techniques I talked about, I’ve got a methodology, and that last NPD I put together took me maybe 4 goes. I was so happy, and it was just amazing.

And now we are seeing it in a new professional range. So what we are focusing on now is, we’ve got a new range that has come out, which we launched together with some help with a non-exec director that we employed last year.

Now he comes from a really rich background of food service, and he helped a company called Santa Maria, I don’t know if you know them, but they’re really big in the Mexican spice space now.

He helped us as a company to reformulate what we’ve done really well in retail and apply it to the catering industry.

And so we’ve got this bulk range we’ve called BANG! Curry Professional, and that is so exciting. I’ve got some really exciting news I can’t share with you today, but that’s pretty much our next launch.

And that to me is so exciting because that’s feeding literally the masses. We are changing some really big things out there in terms of curry.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And are you still the one formulating the recipes? You mentioned they’re the methodology and it taking four goes to get it right, but is it still you sort of there with your hat on, your goggles on, mixing up all the spices?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

I wouldn’t pass that to anyone, because that’s where I find the most joy. No, that’s me.

And it might not be me in a year’s time, but at the moment, yeah, that’s all down to me.

Bex Burn-Callander:

You’ve got to do what you love. It’s really sad when you interview people, you start businesses and the thing they love doing at the beginning, 5 years on, they’re like, “Yeah, I can’t do that anymore. I’ve got to delegate that to someone else.”

It’s nice to hang on to the bits that you love.

Use paid classes as a way to bootstrap your business

Bex Burn-Callander:

You mentioned at the beginning, Shelly, about bootstrapping, and we talk about bootstrapping quite a bit on this show, and I’d love to hear some of the really clever bootstrapping strategies that worked for you and your business.

So the ways that you grew while still cutting costs, saving money, being clever about how you spent on marketing or go to market. So tell me about some of those strategies, 1 or 2 that really worked.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

The one I would say I felt really gave us a lot of return was the cookery classes that we did. It was quite a lot of effort on our part, but we got so much out of it.

We charged for seats, and I literally did it in our own kitchen, so there was no rent involved, so everything went straight into profit, ingredients don’t really cost very much, and we were ranking at number 1 on Google for Indian cooking lessons.

And that was pretty much it, I don’t know how I did it, I have to admit, but I built the website, and it ranked us up there, and it was really quite low cost to the company in order to do that.

And I think we got some really nice wins out of that, and obviously some reviews as well on Google about BANG! Curry and the lessons.

And the intellectual property we took out of that as well is what people actually wanted out of a product, and what sort of recipes and how much time were they prepared to take with this.

Because I was showing them step-by-step, I wasn’t using the kits, and I was showing them from A to Z every single piece that would go into the recipe.

But there was not 1 customer that didn’t go away, take the recipe that I would give them, and cook it from scratch, they all ended up just using the kits.

So at the end I’d give them a little gift bag with the kits and the recipes, but I don’t know anyone that actually cooked the whole thing from scratch, went out and bought all the different ingredients. And so there was a lot of learning gained from that.

And it helped kickstart, it helped finance things like branding, things like print packaging, all of these things, all to do with cost of goods, which at the beginning that’s all we were paying for.

Any marketing, we tried to be very clever about it in terms of guerrilla marketing, digital advertising, which basically I tried to turn my head to and did all that stuff initially myself. I basically worked that bit out.

Bex Burn-Callander:

That’s a great tip, the bootstrapping tip. And what about when it came to getting your products on Waitrose shelves? How did you manage that?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Oh, hard work and perseverance. Knocking, knocking, knocking on the door. Oh that was very difficult. I think that was a conversation probably that started 18 months prior.

These things take a lot of time and nurturing and using things like LinkedIn and social media, just to stay forefront of mind.

Talking about things that are relevant to that particular retailer is really important. Trying to get some insider knowledge, for example, what is Waitrose’s agenda, business goals for the year, and trying to align what you are doing with those agendas, trying to tick their boxes, because everyone has the KPIs.

So yeah, it’s just being very targeted about what we’re showing out there online.

Figuring out how to give the best value for money

Bex Burn-Callander:

I wanted to ask about margin, because it’s so difficult, I think, when you are doing a recipe kit to make sure that you are charging enough to have a sustainable business, but also fit in that sweet spot where the consumer feels that they’re getting value for money. How did you find that price point and how long did it take you to get there?

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

So with BANG!, we’ve actually always pretty much had that perception-to-value difficulty, and giving the consumer that value for money, especially with now. It’s difficult now, everyone wants value for money, everyone’s tightening their purse strings.

And what we try to do was to not make our products a premium product. It’s more about catering to that middle section who have a little bit to spend on their groceries, but it’s not a premium product, basically.

So we priced it such that per portion for a 4 person meal, it’s cheaper actually to use what we are doing than buy a jar sauce, and without a doubt it’s worked out that way. So that’s how we did it.

We compared ourselves by looking at how much it would cost to feed a family of 4 if you use a well-known jar sauce or if you use BANG!

And we pitched ourselves lower in price because we figured, “Well, actually, there’s a price involved to actually do the cooking,” so we allocated a certain amount of value for that, and then we equated it out, and that’s how we came to price the RRP if you like.

Bex Burn-Callander:

That’s great advice actually. Just thinking about the category you are disrupting and making sure that you are on a par or cheaper than the sort of traditional lower quality option. I think that’s amazing that you did that.

Growing up in Brick Lane surrounded by flavoursome food

Bex Burn-Callander:

And then tell me about Brick Lane, because when I saw that you grew up around Brick Lane and were eating out in those restaurants, I was a teenager growing up in London, spending my 20s in London, all my friends and I had favourite restaurants on Brick Lane, we would be going out to 93 Feet East.

It’s just brought back so many memories. So tell me about your life eating and hanging out around Brick Lane and how that inspired your passion for food.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Brick Lane was a hub of the Bangladeshi community at the time. And culturally, food was everything. That’s all anyone ever talked about.

And food, what are you having for dinner? What are you making for so-and-so when they come round? And we were in and out of restaurants all along Brick Lane.

So my dad basically knew every restaurateur there. I don’t know how he does it, but he makes friends with everyone.

And my dad had a factory in Brick Lane. It was a tea-blending factory, and it was just off Brick Lane, and so I spent most of my days there around that area.

And my mum also did a lot of cooking, as I mentioned before. So it was all about food pretty much and understanding which restaurants to go to, which ones gave the best naans, made the best homemade naans and faratas and all of that stuff. It was fantastic. It’s really good.

And most of it I didn’t have to pay for. Everyone was uncle in Brick Lane.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Was that like an early focus group? Because you must’ve seen what were the most popular dishes in a lot of these places or things. Everyone always asks for the chicken tikka masala, always the forever chicken tikka masala.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

It’s a good one though, right?

Bex Burn-Callander:

It is so delicious. Hard to beat it.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

It’s the biryani. It’s the tanginess in the tikka, I think. But it’s not even a traditional dish, you know that? That’s purely British, I’m proud to say that, actually. It’s a very good sort of mix of the two cultures.

Engineering a sustainable brand

Bex Burn-Callander:

And we talked a little bit about sustainability earlier, and I really just wanted to come back to that because you’ve been very careful on how you formulated your kits so that they are kinder to the planet than rivals and other options that you could choose for your dinner.

Tell me about that and how difficult it was to engineer a sustainable brand.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Cost-wise, it was difficult, because our packs, they’re all made of paper. They’re all hand-packed, and we try to minimise the plastic.

Now, we could quite easily have machine-packed everything, using plastic pouches, and there are new materials coming on board, so maybe we will go that way.

But at the time, when we brought the range out, this was the best option for us. But more than anything, I think the sustainability comes across with the fact that you’re using real ingredients and there are no additives and you’re using scratch cooking or home cooking, whichever way you want to put it.

Obviously, you are utilising your ingredients in a more efficient way. There’s less wasted. You’re eating your leftovers. You might not necessarily do that if you have takeaways or jar sauces because not necessarily nice the next day.

But with this, it just keeps on going, and you eat every part of it. And that’s, I think where we are teaching a little bit more about that sustainability aspect.

Being authentic will win you retailers

Bex Burn-Callander:

And was that really useful when it came to winning retailers? They’ve all got their ESG agendas now, everyone wants to ask their suppliers, what are you doing in terms of carbon reduction? And you are right up there saying, “Hey, look, no plastic.”

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Yeah, I would say topmost for the retailers for us was the authenticity. And they’re really attracted to how authentic our flavours were and how they’re put together, the authenticity of the processes.

We didn’t cut corners, we’ve just used some really clever hacks with what we do. And one of the components of our kits is, it sounds so unsexy, it’s a onion, garlic, and ginger mix, and we’ve currently got a patent pending on it, and that was my latest MPD.

And that, what it does, it cuts out all the hard work of the chopping of the onions, the ginger, and garlic. Every curry starts with that famous trio.

And so what it’s doing, it is just helping make something that home cooking takes time and it takes effort, but it is more authentic. And I think that’s what the retailers really loved about what we’re doing.

We are pairing up the convenience and the authenticity, and to top it off, it’s the fact that we minimise our plastic, I think, went in that order.

Building out your business into multiple functions and products

Bex Burn-Callander:

It sounds like you’ve got more than 1 business here. It sounds like you’ve got BANG! Curry, and then you’ve got this amazing ginger, garlic, and onion product, which you could sell that mix to loads of other companies and loads of people in catering.

And then it also seems like you’ve got this R&D process where you can get a new product created in very few steps following a particular process that you have also designed, which seems like an entirely other business that you could sell.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

Thank you. You’ve made that sound really shiny. Thank you. I wish I had an onion, garlic, and ginger thing to show you, but there’s not one here. But the pouches I can show you.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Yeah, show me the pouches.

Shelly Nuruzzaman:

All right, this is new. This is new to market, and this serves 140 portions, and this is the exciting new news that we’ll have very soon. We’ve got a really good listing, but I’m not allowed to publicise it just yet.

So this is for the chefs, right? It makes their lives so easy. They don’t have to store all the different bags, and most of them do come in really heavy plastic tubs.

And the sustainability aspect is really big on that side of the business, I would say more so than for retail.

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Want to know more about Shelly and BANG! Curry?

You can find out more about Shelly on her LinkedIn.

You can learn more about BANG! Curry on their website and Instagram.