Career & Entrepreneurship
A professional reconversion: from Corporate management to homecooking workshops
About Rachna Gursahani
Rachna was born and brought up in India and now lives in Zug with her husband and 3 children (11 & 6 years old twins). She moved to Sydney in 2003 where she lived until she moved to Switzerland in 2018. She was working in the Education sector in Asset and Project Management. When the opportunity came to move to Switzerland the family decided to seize it and move out of their comfort zone, leaving their extended family and comfortable job at home. She started learning German. She enjoys traveling across Europe, swimming, doing yoga and taking quiet serene walks by Lake Zug.
Her Rebirth:
While Rachna was missing her previous work she was happy living in Switzerland. She could spend more time with her family and do things she could not do while having a full time job back home in Australia.
However somewhere deep down something was missing. She had been for a while wanting to do something with the extra time but she didn´t know what. One day Rachna had invited her neighbour to her kitchen to show her how to cook an Indian meal. Her neighbour had a bit of background with Indian food but the flavour of simple home cooked meals made her ecstatic.
Rachna enjoyed the experience of sharing Indian cuisine with her so much that a business idea grew in her. She decided to run Indian vegetarian cooking workshops in her home.
She created brochures and flyers in English and German and dropped them at local shops and dance schools, but she unfortunately didn´t get many people to attend to her workshops. A career coach suggested her to try social media. She had never done it before. Yet she created her Facebook profile @IndianVegetarianCookingClassZug and she recently launched her Instagram profile #indianvegcookclass. .
One of her friends suggested her to create regular events and to make the workshops more interesting. And so began her journey into an unknown territory.
She now runs workshops in her kitchen. The classes are usually for 3 hours and the first two hours are for the food´s preparation and cooking. Then the participants eat and enjoy the meals together.
Workshop Challenges:
The set up was the easy part for her. The difficulty she faced was teaching in itself. Rachna is an intuitive cook so teaching others means having a written recipe, the correct proportions, photographs etc…Quickly her kitchen became a laboratory for testing, with a laptop set for recipe notes and a photography studio. Her kids started giving her ideas and suggestions for food, themes and photography props. Everyone in the home became her partner!
She conducts one-on-one and group classes for adults. The group classes are themed for example Indian snacks, meal ideas for fussy eaters, kids cooking workshop etc. Personalised classes are for people who like to perfectionate their Indian cooking skills, beginners who want one on one attention, gluten free, vegan classes etc. The classes are opportunity to meet other people and network. Classes are conducted in English. It is a great way for the non native English speakers to improve their English.
She also started Kids workshops for children over 10 years old. She had to test on her 11 years old daughter the easiness of the recipes, whether the recipes were understandable and how each tasted.
She was very nervous to teach the class as it was first time for her with young audience, but she thoroughly enjoyed it. It was all went well with no accidents in the kitchen! Touch wood!!! It is great opportunity for kids to be involved in choosing healthy over junk food and helping their parents in their children´s gaining more independence.
We all Learn:
The classes are a learning opportunity for Rachna as well She is constantly learning about different cultures, how others cook their food and about Swiss schools and many other interesting discussions.
There have been some special moments for Rachna over the last few months. A couple of them include when one of the participants became really emotional and in tears when kneading the dough, reminded of an activity she had done with her grandmother. Another time was the chemistry between a mother/daughter.
Future:
She faces new challenges with COVID-19 as her workshops have stopped. However, it doesn´t mean she has stoppedlearning. Every day she posts on her Facebook and Instagram meal ideas and recipes that can be made with pantry ingredients,frozen and canned food, beans, rice, frozen fruits or in can and of course with available seasonal vegetables.
During this time when our ways of living is changing due to COVID-19, we have to adapt how to teach and learn how to cook healthy food. To keep up to date with meal ideas and recipe requests check Rachna’s Instagram profile #indianvegcookclass and her Facebook profile @IndianVegetarianCookingClassZug. If you like them please share the links with your friends.
If you would like to get your children involved in the kitchen Rachna gives you some good tips for the Easter holidays in addition to three easy recipes. You can find a link to Vivamost´s Eat & Drink category.
