Last year, he made kacharia at home using organic jaggery instead of buying it off the shelves, as is the common practice. The response to the homemade kacharia was so good that the first 500 kg of kacharia was enthusiastically bought off before the end of the winters. This year he is planning to sell 2,500 kg of his special kacharia at his stall at Sattvik, the traditional food festival organised by Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) at IIM-A.

And he is certainly a happy man. "As an entrepreneur, this is a wonderful opportunity for me not just to expand my customer base but also to tell people of the many advantages of using organic ingredients in food. The price of a kidney or liver is not worth cheap, chemically enhanced foods," he said.

Deeptiben Surti, a housewife-turned-entrepreneur at the food fest at IIM-A, turned to marketing her home-made stuff after she found it difficult to get nutritious and delicious foods on supermarket shelves. It was then that she dug out her grandmother's old recipes, which became an instant hit in her family. "Then, I decided to sell it commercially," said Surti.

Hers is now a success story. Her chaleda gehun nu khichdo and surati undhiyon in palak gravy have become a huge hit at traditional marriages, factory and company canteens, and even among call centre employees.

Anchal Patel of Samadra, another budding entrepreneur whose stall of matla undhiyo has been a raging success, said that while earlier, they made matla undhiyo for get-togethers of friends and family, now several customers at the food fest have suggested him to start an outlet in clubs. "We will soon enter into negotiations with the city's clubs to open an outlet or to cater to special orders," said Patel.

It is not incorrect to say that most of the foodstuff on display at the fest is the result of innovation and ingenuity. Mahesh Patel, a rural worker at the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, has made a fruit drink from cactus. He said the idea came to him after he discovered that children often peeled the cactus fruit to eat the delicious pulp inside. Now he is marketing his rosy pink juice. But, as he said, he is still waiting for the laboratories to provide a scientific appraisal of the fruit's nutritional value, after which he will start bottling the juice and sell it in supermarkets and city shops.