Anandan's Lip-smacking Home-made sweets for Diwali

Hari Kishore 11 years ago

I would rather call Diwali the festival of sweets than attribute it to a festival of lights. Earlier, women in my household would start preparing sweets a week or two before the festival. In fact sweets and snack-making is an important part of Diwali and they would make dozens of sweets at home. I remember nibbling on mouth-watering morsels of home-made jelabis and savories throughout the day.

But unfortunately, hectic schedules and working women have made it almost impossible to don the apron and prepare those delicacies at home. But then, Diwali isn’t complete without sweets. Though the sweet shops in the city have lined up variety of sweets and confectioneries, I bet nothing can beat the ghee-flavoured, lip-smacking home-made sweets.

For those who are time-pressed to prepare sweets at home, you can still relish home-made sweets without greasing your palm with ghee or oil.  Thanks to N S Anandan, who runs his own catering business in Mylapore, and has been supplying home-made sweets for Diwali for more than 20 years now.

He usually takes orders from nearby residents and has several corporate biggies as his clients.  Anandan, who boasts that jangrees and badushas are his specialties, says that the prices are nominal and are fixed in the lines of cost of labour, raw material etc.

 “I do have a small profit margin, but that won’t be a burden on the customers,” he quips. A quick glance at the price list shows that the items are indeed nominally priced. His famous Jangree is priced at Rs. 350 a kg, Badusha and Mysore Pak at Rs. 300 a kg, Wheat Halwa is priced at Rs. 380 a kg, Badam Halwa is priced at Rs. 750 a kg and coconut sweets and assorted sweets are priced at Rs. 350 a kg each.

Apart from sweets, he also prepares savories like mixer, kara bundi, kara sev and pakodas, all priced at Rs. 280 a kg.

But one thing Anandan never compromises on is the quality. “If quality is compromised, I will not have return visitors and cannot run my business successfully for 20 years,” he says. All his sweets and savories are prepared with branded refined oil and ghee and that guarantees the taste, he says.

About marketing his products, he says, “I do not believe in all these online and hi tech marketing. Most of my clients are regular customers and the popularity of my sweets is spread only through word of mouth.”

During the Diwali season, he says that the total orders would come up to 400 or 500 kgs.

“I can even take and prepare 1 kg of sweets as a single order,” he says. However, Anandan does not provide any delivery services as it involves a lot of logistics and man power. “Many of my clients know that I do not deliver the orders, as it is a tedious task. I give them a delivery date and time and they can collect it from my office,” he says and adds that he has never missed a deadline in delivery in the last 20 years.

Anandan is very popular for his home-made sweets among the residents of Mylapore, Mandaveli, Adyar, Besant Nagar. He also has several high profile customers, including Abirami Ramanathan, the owner of Abirami Theaters and the big bosses of India Cements.

Mr. N S Anandan

Anandan can be contacted on 98403 96042, 87545 44753. He is located at No 42, Ayyappa Nivas, Abraham Street, Mylapore, Chennai.


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