Naina Kansal – Tapri Chai
As we count down to International Women’s Day, the Barrhaven BIA is proud to feature our female board members in our brand new series – This is #MyBarrhaven. Their stories are inspiring and we are so proud to have each of them on our board. All the women featured will be attending our Women’s Day High Tea in Barrhaven on March 4th – Register Now to save you seat!
Meet Naina Kansal
Naina Kansal is the proud owner of Tapri Chai and joined the Barrhaven BIA Board just over a year ago. Tapri Chai, located at 200 Kennevale, is a beautiful cozy café featuring Chai and vegetarian Indian street food – it’s a must try! With Naina at the helm in the kitchen, they bring authentic Indian flavours to the Barrhaven community. Cooking was not a skill that Naina grew up with but this is a true pandemic success story – with all that free time, she focused her energy on learning and has created something truly special.
Starting out
Naina grew up in India and moved the Canada when she was 18 years old. She initially enrolled in Engineering but that wasn’t for her and she found her calling with the Business program at Algonquin College. She ultimately started working at the College working her way up to managing the Entrepreneurship Program and then moved on to a role with Start Up Canada. Working with entrepreneurs, she felt that she could be of more assistance if she were an entrepreneur herself and ultimately knew this was her goal.
Pandemic pass-time leads to entrepreneurial passion
Like many of us, when the pandemic hit, Naina found herself at home and looking for things to keep her busy. Traditionally in India, women were the cooks of the family but Naina’s father had resented this notion and she never learned. She survived through college on toast, apples, instant noodles, and rice but with the advent of available time, this was the perfect time to learn. She wanted to learn how to cook authentic Indian dishes for her and her partner Parth to enjoy at home so she started learning, through YouTube and online, and found she truly loved it. On a vacation to India, she connected with street vendors to learn their recipes and techniques.
Tapri Chai
As her passion for cooking grew, Naina and Parth started to host pop-ups in commercial kitchens selling her dishes. They had a lot of fun and were learning on the fly – how to turn on the gas in a commercial kitchen or problems with the POS system, there was always something new to learn. These pop-ups were a quick success and often sold out but after 3 years they decided to pause because it wasn’t scalable the way they were working. They were left with 2 options – open a café or start manufacturing a product line. Ultimately, the café option won out and the small cozy space in the perfect location on Kennevale was born. Throughout, Tapri Chai has been built on word of mouth and they have done little marketing – the authentic flavours speak for themselves.
On the horizon, Naina and Parth are looking to open a second location for Tapri Chai and are also looking at some other business ventures. After working with entrepreneurs, it seems that Naina has found her passion as entrepreneur herself.
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