Who doesn’t love chocolates? It is this love that has made many young people in the city take up chocolate confectionery as a full-time career. From establishing a customer base, creating an online presence to experimenting with flavours, young chocolatiers in the city have done it all.
Two years ago, 25-year-old S.S.S. Keshav Krishna, a graduate in hotel management, started ‘Cheers Chocolates’ (www.cheerschoco lates.com) to bring the flavour of Belgian chocolates to Chennai.
“There is a huge market for chocolate confectionery in the city,” he says.
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Many like him have not set up outlets to market their chocolates. They work as and when they get orders. “I have regular clients, including corporate companies. One of my biggest orders was for 8,000 handmade truffles for a company during Deepavali,” he says.
Keshav’s chocolate pralines, which are moulded chocolates with different types of fillings, are popular with his clients. Being a cricketer worked to his advantage recently when he got the opportunity to share his creations with Indian cricket captain M.S. Dhoni.
Sathya Karuppiah (35), who has an MBA in finance, quit her job to launch ‘Choco Punch’ (http://choco punchchocabloc.blogspot. com/) with her friend Lakshmi Venkatesan, four years ago. Their drive to do something on their own took them to the world of chocolates.
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“Lakshmi’s father had learnt to make chocolates from a friend in Ooty. We learned the basics from him and improvised,” says Sathya.
They get orders mostly during weddings, special occasions and the festive season. Almond cracker and ‘choco crunchees’ are their specialities. The duo has taken to online forums to further their venture.
“We have a blog. We take online orders and also through our contacts on WhatsApp,” she says. They also conduct half-day workshops in chocolate making for beginners.
Oragadam, which was once a barren swathe of land, is aiming to become the Detroit of the State.
It is launching new options for entertainment to satisfy the needs of its growing population.
The small village sandwiched between Chengalpattu and Kancheepuram is gaining from both infrastructure development and residential real estate growth because of the numerous automobile and automobile-related industries there.
World-renowned companies like Daimler, Nissan, Komatsu, Apollo Tyres and Royal Enfield have brought in a multi-cultural working population to Oragadam.
Realtor S. Mohan says the dry region that had few buyers a few years ago, has become a gold mine after the State government marked the place as an industrial zone.
A ground measuring 2,400 sq. ft. that was sold for Rs. 10,000, some 10 years ago, is now valued between Rs. eight lakh and Rs. 15 lakh.
Mr. Mohan says the industrial zone is keeping pace with infrastructure development but lacks entertainment facilities like cinema houses or malls.
Siddarth, who works in a private firm in Oragadam, echoes Mohan’s views. He says he avails of the in-house sports facilities available in some multi-storeyed residential facilities, for lack of better options.
Residents of the locality, strategically located between two national highways (NH 4 and NH 45), continue to depend on the city for their leisure and entertainments needs.
(Reporting by Serena Josephine M. and R. Srikanth)