Amintiri, an online cake store, the first of its kind in India has now opened its first flagship store in Bengaluru’s Museum Street. Priyanka Bhojwani, the co-founder of Amintiri spoke to ET Hospitality World about the journey from the online to the live store..

Amintiri was the first online, social cake store in India. They started operations 2 years ago as an online platform that delivered cakes in Bangalore and cake loaves to Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, and Pune. This venture is the brainchild of Suraj Madhnani, a passionate foodie who decided to put his passion for food and entrepreneurial zeal combined with his love for feeding people into an online cake business, and Priyanka Bhojwani who began her tryst with business at 19 with Flaunt, a clothing line.

Speaking about the small beginnings they had, Priyanka Bhojwani says, “Suraj wanted to enter the restaurant space with specialty cakes, and we thought it was better to test the waters with an exclusive online store that caters to the Bangalore market. We decided not to tie up with any of the online delivery stores because we wanted our products to be delivered in a particular style. We would like to call ourselves an affordable luxury cake store because as decadent as our cakes are, they are easy on your pockets.”

This is a crowded market segment with many home bakers and bakeries offering cakes, but our cakes are professionally crafted, made with premium ingredients and packaged extremely well so we stood a better chance amidst the crowd. Also, since food needs to appeal to the senses of sight, feel and taste, initially we sent out samplers to many people to give them a glimpse of our cakes. With time this along with great word of mouth reviews, our business steadily grew,” reminisces Bhojwani.

“After two years of being an exclusive online store, we finally decided to be a little more daring and went for our first anchor store in Bangalore. This gave us a chance to display our offerings as smaller pastries that were single servings, along with this the freshly brewed coffees, cold chocolate, freshly made pasta etc. have gotten a tremendous response, our regular online shoppers are happy to see the brand presence in a store format. Our price points are what gets people’s attention to begin with, we offer cakes beginning from just INR 860. Our motto is, if there is a cause for celebration we are there and if there isn’t we can speak one,” adds Bhojwani.