Cut open the package, pour the gravy over pieces of fish, cook for five minutes and your fish curry is ready! Fresh Onlive’s ‘ready to chatty’ (mud pot) fish curry mixes are the brainchild of Fort Kochi native Saneera VM.
The 48-year-old economics graduate ran a business delivering cut and cleaned fish in 2016. Less than a year later family commitments led her to shut shop. Later she moved on to sell pathiri, appam, idiyappam and chapathi that she cooked herself but her efforts wound up during the pandemic.
“Once things started opening up, I thought of going back to the fish business; after all, that was my core area. Then I considered including value-added products. Why not ready-to-make fish curry? It is easy for people on the go; your fish curry is ready in five minutes or so, you don’t even need to add salt to the mix,” informs Saneera. Her experience in food-tech comes from the courses she has done in food processing and packaging.
Supporting her in the business, with investment and production, are three friends - Jaiza Mujeeb, Merfath Shahjahan and Abeena Mansur.
Her workday starts at the Fresh OnLive store in Thevara, Kochi, at 4 am. With an assistant, she begins preparations - peeling and chopping onions, grating and grinding coconuts, roasting spices - that will go into the five varieties of ready-to-cook curry pastes that will be ready by 8.30 am. Fresh fish arrives from the Kochi and Munnambam harbour and other fishing hubs in the city.
The Fresh OnLive store can be accessed via the app or phone. It delivers a variety of seafood - raw or cooked - up to a radius of 10 km within city limits.
The five ‘ready to chatty’ gravy mixes are typical Kerala preparations such as thenga aracha curry (coconut-based), pachamasala curry, meen mulagittathu, varutharacha curry and fish moilee. These were the result of several rounds of trial and error before the recipes were finalised. She is now working on packaging using retort technology.
“We also prepare the curry on an order placed the day before, like for shellfish such as crab - roast and fry or squid, The dishes we prepare are either delivered to customers or get picked up.” The curry paste has a shelf life of seven days if refrigerated; otherwise it should be had the same day as no preservatives are added. Each 350 gm pack is priced at ₹ 80, and can be used for 250 gm of fish.
She has added more items to the list such as meat, chicken and pickle made of meat, fish, mussel besides lime, dates, gooseberry, papaya, garlic, mango and carrot.
Fresh OnLive app is available on Google Playstore and App Store.
