A quintessential gourmet with offbeat culinary tastes, Nishita Biyani aspires to make Wafflist a household name. Only a year into the business of waffle-making, this venture is already beginning to show promise. All of 26, this charismatic woman entrepreneur, talks about the early days of her start-up, family and her other interests.

Nishita Biyani, a 26-year-old upcoming entrepreneur based in Mumbai, casts aside her chances at joining her family business to run Wafflist – a café specialising in culinary eggless waffles. A year into running this innovative start-up, to the question, “Why waffles?” Nishita quips: “It’s very simple. I saw a clear business opportunity. I love waffles. I saw a gap in the Indian market, recognised it and created a product that would work. Especially in India, which has a major sweet tooth, I thrive on sugar”.

Daughter of Anil Biyani, Director of Future Group, Nishita has been confident about her entrepreneurial prowess. “Why should I take help from anyone? What if there isn’t any help? I want to learn and make myself more capable. I want it to be a mentally grilling process,” she says.

Much of her resolve comes from the cues she has learnt through her upbringing. “It’s in my blood—doing business. Dad’s always been stringent with expenditure. Growing up, I always had to take permission before buying something. To this day, I don’t have either a debit or a credit card,” Nishita says. Rejected from Le Cordon Bleu, Paris, France, in 2011, she made up her mind to make it on her own. She went ahead and did what most aspiring cooks do—buy a baking book. She wanted to dispel her mother’s belief that her dislike for cooking could be overcome, Nishita baked her first cake. “It was a disaster. It’s only now I realise baking is more of a science, than an art,” she says.

Nishita’s talents are not limited to running Wafflist, she is a singer too. When her first music album Tum Hi Ho was released, she sold the rights of her title song to Hungama to square away the cost of producing the song with her father from whom she had borrowed the money. Her father refused to be reimbursed on grounds that he had done what any parent would do.

Like in business, Nishita invariably encounters hurdles in getting work done. “The whole process of setting up business requires dealing with men. For instance, setting up a physical store has only male construction workers. Due to my young age, they thought I was a fool. Having decided that I wouldn’t let my family background influence my venture, I wouldn’t tell people my surname. My friends used to call me out for not using my name to my advantage, but I wanted to go out there and face the harsh realities of doing business in India,” she speaks passionately.

Simplicity and a laid back attitude seem to be the guiding motto behind the business as well as the branding of Wafflist. “It’s very simple. Everyone who walks into Wafflist should be able to relax and do his or her own thing. Even the brand colours—orange, white and yellow – have a nice relaxed vibe about them. They are no hang-ups about it. I saw it; I liked it. Overthinking kills creativity, and makes design too logical,” she says. Nishita is also a professional photographer refraining from commercialising her passion, apart from being a singer and music composer.

She confesses she’s a very emotional person, like most creative people are. Not surprising therefore that a completely focused and logical activity like business was especially hard for her. That is when her father stepped in and trained her for the first few months. “He was very suspicious of how I was operating Wafflist. He would ask me all sorts of situational questions. How do you send money to the bank? What will you do if there is shrinkage in the bottom line? It’s because of him I learnt what I needed to know to start up,” she says.

Soon launching another store in Mumbai, 15 seconds away from BSE, Nishita is grounded in reality and ready for what is coming her way. She is currently Wafflist’s one-man army. Confessing her shortage of funds because she is just beginning, she can’t afford an office, let alone a team. She admits that being a woman entrepreneur is not a cake walk, “In India, women are brought up to be well-behaved with proper etiquette, and well spoken. That’s how I’ve been raised too. But with the BMC and the government, you’ve got to be rough. Sometimes it doesn’t work and they take you for a ride because of it.”

She provides an obstacle she is currently facing. Having recently acquired her new 1,500 square foot property in Fort, Mumbai, for her second store following a bank loan, the BMC seems adamant in slowing down the process. “They have a problem that I didn’t ask for explicit permission to build a staircase and a basic bathroom in a fully legal property. I’m losing rent every day because of this, money I honestly don’t have money to waste. Every day is a struggle, but I am committed to fight this battle, because it is for a cause that makes me happy,” Nishita says.

Receiving a footfall of about 450-500 people per week, Nishita has managed to create a successful business model that has been breaking even since the very first month of its launch. For her next store, she plans to introduce savoury waffles and mocktails.

With no business degree, Nishita swears on experience-based learning to follow your passion. “I learnt everything I know on the go. If it doesn’t work out, just remember there are no guarantees to anything in life anyway, so you might as well try,” she says when asked to advise her peers and juniors.

Why did she decide to start up a business? “For personal growth. The transformation in me is so obvious, even my dad was surprised. I used to a very emotional, hyper person. Simply managing the risk of having a start-up everyday has taught me to calm down and not let the fear of ‘what if’ get to me,” she says.

Nishita has two or three more venture ideas in mind that she is determined to launch and lead to success. Her next one, information for which she smartly kept under wraps, will be releasing sometime in the next two months, and has something to do with – no surprises, here – dessert.