Sugar high

Keshewar works with local residents of Himachal Pradesh

Chocolates always make people happy," believes Rohan Keshewar, 25, from Chembur. To spread a little cheer amid the lockdown gloom in Kasol, Himachal Pradesh, where he got stuck during a vacation in March last year, Keshewar started making chocolates. Having toyed with the idea of chocolate-making as a source of employment for women in Ladakh, the social entrepreneurship graduate from TISS decided to test the waters in Kasol. "When I realised the idea was selling, I started looking for a place to rent, moved to Patli Kul on the Kullu Manali highway, and started the licensing procedure," shares Keshewar about the start of The Himalayan Chocolates (THC), which offers handmade bars infused with Pahadi ingredients and employs women from the villages of Kullu-Manali.

Rohan Keshewar

Keshewar has since skilled around six women in the art of creating dark chocolates, and infusing and packaging them without machines. Adopting indigenous flavours was a conscious decision, he says: "Barley is a staple in Ladakh, and we loved its pairing with chocolate. We sourced Kashmiri almonds and Himachali walnuts. We chanced upon pink salt while scouring for ingredients."

While they got off to a slow start in June, by October they had launched five flavours, and during Christmas-New Year's, they were sold out. But all of this wasn't cakewalk. "I come from a middle-class family, and ours is a hand-to-mouth existence. Ditching a corporate job, and starting my own business at this time took a lot of convincing, but my parents backed me up, and now we're making profits," he explains. The plan is to set up a cooperative model to generate jobs for women. "I want to scale it up slowly and remain independent, so we are running a crowdfunding campaign."

Log on to: thehimalayanchocolates.com