Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar says she wants the brand and its products to be recognised globally.

“For women there are no glass ceilings. Women need to dream for themselves. The empowerment and support has to come from home. From family, you need to be empowered to pursue your dreams than what companies do. I am a big believer that women empowerment has to begin at home

Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar tells women, “Let the spotlight of your life be on you. For too long women have been afraid to dream about themselves. We have given them chance to be born, lets give them the chance to dream”.

Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar says the website gets a billion visits a month. There are 5,500 brands engaged with the company. There are 128 stores in 58 cities across the country.

“ I used to meet people daily. In a week I would attend 15-20 meetings. I used to meet a lot of people. That’s how I learnt a lot”.

Falguni Nayar says Nykaa hired mostly young talent straight from colleges. The criteria was to judge how passionate a candidate was for Nykaa. 

Nayar credited the millennial consumers who were exposed to social media as the key to her brand’s success in early days. “Since then, consumers from the old age group are also buying beauty products, but the initial success was from millennials,” she said.

“We are a very open organisation. We learn from our customers. They tell us to bring this particular brand or open a store here. We have been very active on social media”

“However, I also had to admit that entrepreneurial journeys are not easy and the early days are characterised by a lot of pain points. We were a tech-enabled platform. Getting the technology right were the initial issues. Then getting proof of concept, consumer adoption of product, high quality service and keeping the customers happy are big tasks. I think the first two-three years of any startup are the hardest. The lessons and skills learnt as an organisation are very helpful in the long run.”

“There are so many amazing chefs who are doing fantastic jobs all around the world, but if I had to take three names I would say Himanshu Saini, he is doing fantastic work. And mark my words, in five years he is going to be the most famous Indian chefs. Second is Pratik Sadhu and third is The Bombay Canteen and O Pedro’s Hussain Shahzad. They are all are doing amazing jobs,” Chef Manish Mehrotra said.

“I think it was always there with out cuisine. The amount of vegetarian dishes or vegetables we consume in our homes over the years was always there. Potatoes came three hundred or so years back to India and I feel like India can definitely win an Olympics of India dishes. we just have to dig our own recipes and we will find thousand of things,” celebrity chef Manish Mehrotra said. 

“Yes, I am so happy that it is changing. All of us chefs around the world, we have an ultimate goal to get real Indian food to the world. We want to tell them that India is not only about North and West frontiers, there is West, East, South, and every part of India has a unique cuisine to offer. For instance, ten years ago, no one knew what dosa was, but not everyone knows it is one of the best pancakes in the world. Things are changing and regional cuisines are coming up. Even in India a lot of perceptions are changing. L20 years back “

“When we started Indian Accent, I have seen empty restaurant, sometimes zero covers for dinners, sometimes people used to come and walk out after reading the menu. But whatever dish used to come out to the table, we used to make sure that the common word called ‘tasty khana’ should be there. We wanted to ensure that there is some kind of familiarity in the food. We also did unique combinations at the restaurant like the Blue Cheese Naan or Gujarati chunda with pork ribs. Then, people understood our concept and they came back.”

“I was in London [before coming to India], and London at that time was a cosmopolitan city of different cultures, nationalities, and every country’s food was represented at a good level. and I thought why can’t we create this in India. Because at that point of time, in the early to late 2000s I felt that the youth of India had a very big disconnect with Indian food. Young Indians had stopped going to Indian restaurants. There was a big disconnect. This became a big motivation for me – that you have to do Indian food in such a way that it reconnects the young generation, people coming from outside India can relish it, and regional cuisine can come into the limelight.”

On being asked whether he is dissing all food critics and if he takes them seriously, he adds, “No, I am not saying that. I believe that everyone is a critic because food is one such thing that can have thousands of opinion. Food is very very individual. I take them seriously in terms of what feedback they give.”

Chef Manish Mehrotra says his diners are his best critics. “Definitely, [my diners are my best critics]. I judge all my dishes, whether its taste and presentation is good and whether I will be paying that much price for this dish if I go out and eat it – it is a benchmark to see the dish.”

“Chef Ananda Solomon is a legend. He is one of the finest Chefs I have ever seen, who not only knows about food but also about guests’ psyche. For a chef or anyone, including a fashion designer, filmmaker or musician, you are doing it for someone else and knowing what is going on in their brain is very important. And that is what I learned from the Chef. I still believe in feedback, and one Golden rule that I learnt from him is that the plate which goes inside the restaurant is very important, but the plate which comes back from the restaurant is even more important.”

Chef Manish Mehrotra said home-cooked food taught him vegetarian food can be tasty during the edition of Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. “At home, we used to have [daal, bhat, roti and sabzi] pure vegetarian food, mostly without onion and garlic because my father never used it eat both. Many festivals (Janamashtami, Holi, Diwali, Dussehra and more) were celebrated with food at home. And that really taught me that vegetarian food can be really tasty, you don’t need onion and garlic to make food delicious, and fewer ingredients can make a delicious dish.”

Growing up in Patna, which did not have any fine-dining restaurants, Chef Manish Mehrotra talked about his first experience with fine dining. “My first experience with fine dining I would say was when we used to have relatives all over India and we used to go out with them. In terms of proper fine dining, the experience of going to a five-star hotel and having Indian khana there was sort of the fine-dining experience that was available when I was a kid. Whenever we used to come to Delhi, we used to encounter that kind of meal. So, I would say I encountered my first dining meal, which was not plated, in the early 80s,” the Chef said.

Chef Manish Mehrotra says, “Plated food was always there and that is what I try to design – inspired from the Thali, the Satya meal or temple food, where you will have different textures, flavours and colours all prominent on a platter. This is what I do. I am reviving the old traditions which got lost somewhere in between.”

As the person who has heralded plated Indian food and fine dining, Chef Manish Mehrotra says, “I think the first plated food in the world or in India was a Thali or a Satya meal. What do you mean by plated – where everything and every part of the dish is decided and designed in such a way that we know where it should go on the plate. And in the Satya meal, every particular dish has a defined position on a banana leaf. So, we have been having plated food for many centuries. But somehow in the middle, we got lost somewhere and everything started coming in a big bowl, drowned in a brown, yellow or orangish kind of gravies.”

Chef Manish Mehrotra’s Dal Moradabadi and Beetroot and Goat Cheese Salad are “two very modern dishes inspired from the grassroots of India”. He added that the country has many gems which are all right to be served in a fine dining restaurant.

Begin by making beetroot batons using boiled beetroots and carving tube-like shapes using a cutting pipe. Add the cooked beetroot batons, a little bit of lime juice, honey, a pinch of salt and pepper, boiled ball-shaped potatoes and Kasundi (a Bengali mustard sauce), and mix it all together in a bowl. Then, plate the beetroots and potatoes nicely and garnish with goat cheese, peanut butter, pea shoots, crispy pieces of bread, raisins, and baked Manipur black rice and pistachio Chikki.

In a normal pan, add a little bit of ghee. Once the ghee is hot, add one or two cloves, jeera and a little bit of Hing and cook. Add Moong Dal (boiled with a little bit of haldi and salt) to the mixture (having a paste-like texture). After mixing everything, add a little bit of ginger and green chillies to the pan. Cook and add coriander and butter to the dal for the final touches. While plating the dish, garnish it with Bhuknu masala, Imli ka chutney (tamarind chutney), dhaniya (coriander) and mint chutney, a dash of lemon juice, chopped onions and tomatoes, and crispy Moong Dal.

Culinary Director of Indian Accent restaurants, Chef Manish Mehrotra, takes viewers into his kitchen at Indian Accent during the 20th edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. He shows how to make two dishes – Dal Moradabadi (a Moong Dal dish which everyone was against being served in a fine-dining restaurant and cost a bomb) and Beetroot and Goat Cheese Salad with Potato (inspired by the Kolkata Beetroot Chop). Popularised in the streets of Muradabad, one of the unique things about his Dal Moradabadi recipe is that it does not have onion or garlic.

Brunch Editor Jamal Shaikh introduces the Culinary Director of Indian Accent restaurants, Manish Mehrotra, often called India’s best Chef, at the 20th edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. His restaurants have adorned power lists all over the world.

Dhami said he considers himself lucky to become the youngest chief minister of the state and thanked Central leadership to put faith in him. He added that people continue to learn till end of their life.

Dhami said that the emphasis on Indian languages will not impact tourism sector and only make students’ life easier.

“The demolition activities were undertaken according to the time and situation but some people are falsely claiming that the evidence got destroyed during the action. The SIT has informed the high court that all pieces of evidence were preserved.”

“It had already been videographed. Therefore, there is no such thing as tampering with evidence.”

Dhami said that the anger over the murder of Ankita Bhandari was understandable as she was the daughter of Uttarakhand. But the government took immediate action against the culprits and initiated SIT probe into the case, he added.

“Some people are making it a political issue unnecessarily, it is not a political issue. Our government wants, and I want that the criminals should be given the harshest punishment so that in future, let alone committing such crimes, they won’t even think about it”.

Dhami said that Himachal Pradesh is a state of pilgrimage and religious activities and AAP is just a tourist just like them. Citing the Uttarakhand assembly election results, Dhami said it is evident that people of Uttarakhand are nationalists and didn’t fall for electoral freebies.

Opposition has been accusing the BJP of polarising the voters by bringing up the issue of Uniform Civil Code during elections. Dhami said there’s no basis behind such allegations. He said people of Uttarakhand were in favour of the UCC and gave mandate to BJP on this issue.

Dhami denied that people are angry over the Agnipath scheme.

“This has been brought in the interest of the nation as well as the youth and there is no anger in either Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh over the scheme.”

He also said that a large number of youth participated in the recent recruitment drives.

Dhami acknowledged that PM Modi is a big factor in BJP’s performance in assembly elections, saying the work done by him hasn’t left any sector or demography untouched.

When asked about the biggest factor that helped BJP retain power in Uttarakhand, Dhami said that the party’s public welfare policies and leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are the one of the biggest driving factors behind BJP’s performance in elections.

“Today, when we go to the remote areas of Uttarakhand, the elders treat Modi ji as their son and the youth see him as a guardian,” he said.

He also accused the previous Congress government at the Centre for neglecting smaller states because they have fewer seats in Parliament.

“The people of both the states have seen the previous Congress government very well. Those governments have always worked to destroy the identity of these (Himalayan) states. They used to think that these are smaller states, they wouldn’t make much difference to the parliamentary majority.”

Dhami argued that BJP has become “so big that everyone wants” to contest elections, however, the selection of candidates is done after a lot of thought. He said people associated with the BJP understand this and voters are also slowly realising this.

“In Himachal also people are understanding that BJP is the only option which will continuously take forward the development, so that people support BJP and will elect it to power.”

Dhami stressed that he follows BJP’s ideology of “nation first, party second, individual last” and is moving forward on that principle to provide stability to the government.

“We have been taught that country is first, party is second, and individual is last. We have accepted this principle from the mind and soul and are moving forward with it only,” the Uttarakhand chief minister said. “We are able to work smoothly because we have the blessings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”

Dhami took the reins of the BJP government in Uttarakhand at 45, becoming the youngest chief minister of the state. While he took the office at relatively turbulent times, which saw three chief ministers in four months, the BJP leader seems to have steadied the ship.

When asked about the learning points as a chief minister, Dhami said there’s always scope for learning across all fields – political, social, or administrative. He said he has been learning from seniors and experienced leaders in the party and trying to execute new things on the ground.

“It is our endeavour that Uttarakhand should be included in the list of best performing states of the country. For that, we are working in every field. Constantly monitoring, reviewing, reflecting and analysing. While doing all this, I am learning new things and trying to execute them on the ground.”

Dhami asserted that the enthusiasm among voters to give another chance to the BJP was palpable during his public meetings in Himachal Pradesh. Citing the work done by central and the state government – both led by the BJP – Dhami said that the voters will reverse the decades-long trend of voting the ruling party out of power because they want the development work to continue in Himachal Pradesh.

““If anyone has worked for the development of Himalayan states, it is Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His affection for states in the Himalayas, be it Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh, is clearly visible across the region. In this election, wherever I have gone, it is palpable from the enthusiasm among the voters that they will give another opportunity to those who have worked for them. This time they will reverse the trend.”

“In the last five years, there have been several developmental works including the establishment of AIIMS, inauguration of Atal Tunnel, ensuring tap water supply and gas connection in every household. The state government has also started its schemes and both centre and state government have been doing a great job together.”