I started a side hustle from my kitchen table with £650 – people doubted me but now I’ve made six figures

WHAT started out as a side hustle from her kitchen table has now spiralled into a multi-six figure business.

Shelly Nuruzzaman, a 52-year-old mum-of-two, is a female entrepreneur from West London, who changed her life after throwing some spices together in her kitchen.

Previously a scientist, with a PhD in Inertial Confinement Fusion (an energy process that initiates nuclear fusion reactions by compressing and heating targets filled with fuel) from Imperial College London, Shelly swapped the laboratory for her kitchen after she had her second child, where she spent two years perfecting the formulas for her award-winning BANG! Curry kits.

And now, her Brick Lane-inspired meal kits have taken the UK by storm, and are raking in the cash after being stocked in Waitrose.

Without a job and living on her husband’s salary, Shelly initially started the business with just £650, back in 2014.

The savvy woman bootstrapped the business to get it off the ground, testing recipes and organising cookery classes in her home, relentlessly going to food markets and building the website herself.

But after a lot of dedication, the brand sold over 750,000 kits in the first five years and now has a multi-six figure turnover.

Things really took off just before the Coronavirus pandemic, as she told Fabulous: “It was at a point where I was spending a lot more time at home after having my two boys.

“I had more time to cook because I wasn't working full time. And so I had this inspiration about how I could turn my cooking skills I've had since I was a little girl [into a business].

“I've always had these recipes that I've made again and again, and they're all curry dishes, because my heritage is Bangladeshi. I grew up around Brick Lane and I learned everything from my mum.

“Food has always been part of the family, but I was always too busy. I had two careers before having children, and I started the business with the idea that anyone can make this type of food.”

After not returning back to work, money was tight for Shelly, as she shared: “We went from a household where we had two wages, to one wage, so it was a bit tricky to get accustomed from two wages to one wage.

“When you're going through that transition period you haven't got a lot to play with, so I certainly didn't have a pot of cash in the bank ready to invest into a new idea.”

Shelly explained her business idea to her husband Mark, 52, and the ball was very quickly rolling, as she beamed: “I came up with ideas all the time. I mentioned it to my partner, Mark, I said, ‘what do you think?’

“But this was the first idea that we both really ran with, and in five minutes we had the brand name.

“It took about a year to get to the good curries where it was consistent. It wasn't easy.”

Shelly explained that she had lots of people doubt her when she initially came up with the idea, as she added: “There was a lot of doubt.”

She claimed that people would say to her ‘isn't that just a spice mix?’ or ‘do people really want that? I can make my own curry’.

How to start your own business

Dragon's Den star Theo Paphitis revealed his tips for budding entrepreneurs:

• One of the biggest ­barriers aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners face is a lack of confidence. You must believe in your idea — even more than that, be the one boring your friends to death about it.
• Never be afraid to make decisions. Once you have an idea, it’s the confidence to make decisions that is crucial to starting and maintaining a business.
• If you don’t take calculated risks, you’re standing still. If a decision turns out to be wrong, identify it quickly and deal with it if you can. Failing that, find someone else who can.
• It’s OK not to get it right the first time. My experience of making bad decisions is what helped develop my confidence, making me who I am today.
• Never underestimate the power of social media, and remember the internet has levelled the playing field for small businesses.
• Don’t forget to dream. A machine can’t do that!

But with Shelly’s curry kits, you can make a traditional meal from scratch, with barely any effort involved, as she added: “The premise of these kits is that you don't have to understand how to do anything with regards to spices or the ingredients.

“The range themselves are easy to use curry kits, and they all contain all the spices you need for your flavouring.

“They also contain another sachet which has the onion, garlic and ginger which anyone that makes curry dishes will know that that's pretty much the most mundane part.

“I love cooking and everything, but it does take a lot of time. So we've put all the elements in so you just need to hydrate with water and then pop it in a pan, and then you have your homemade curry sauce literally in five minutes. And that's pretty much how all of them work.”

To raise funds for the business, Shelly ran cookery lessons at her home in Chiswick, where she would charge people up to £90 to attend, making around £400 profit per class.

She revealed: “In order to do some market research, I started cooking classes in my own kitchen.

“We charged people to come and learn. We'd cook five dishes and everyone would have their own recipe that would guide them through.

“And then at the end of it was sit and dine, a bit like a supper club, but a learning experience as well.

“So we did that, and that raised quite a decent amount of finance in order for us to scale it up a little bit more.

“After that we started going and trading at local farmers markets and anything we could to get out there. People loved it.

“And so the way I did it was, in the first couple of years, I bootstrapped, and what that means is I invested, and then I would sell, and then reinvest and sell.”

We became Amazon's best seller for curry kits and best sellers for lots of our ranges

Not only this, but thanks to the brand awareness that Shelly has created, her company was picked up by recipe box delivery service HelloFresh.

Shelly beamed: “We landed our contract with HelloFresh, and that's pretty much what launched the brand.”

But whilst fulfilling their HelloFresh content, Shelly’s business was still based at home, so things needed to change.

She continued: “We had to really turn that around so quickly. We had to hire an industrial kitchen and get hold of an industrial piece of equipment.

“There was quite a lot of DIY stuff going on with the machinery, but we managed it, and we pulled out the bag. That was quite an exciting time.”

When the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, important decisions were made, as Shelly explained: “We obviously hit the pandemic and so we made a decision where we decided to set up online and it was the best thing we could have done.

“We were in the right place at the right time. Home cooking was for obvious reasons, really up there for health and the fact that nobody was going out. And so, you know, for us, the business really accelerated. It helped scale us.

“We became Amazon's best seller for curry kits and best sellers for lots of our ranges.”

And since then, the business has been going from strength to strength ever since, as the entrepreneur added: “We turned over six figures.

It's completely changed my life. My personal salary has gone up and up and up

“The period between September and January are our best selling months, and we obliterate our sales figures.

“I think curry making is seen as an autumnal type of meal, if you like, and that's when we really do well in terms of sales.”

And now, thanks to being stocked in Waitrose, Shelly predicts even more revenue for her business, as she shared: “With the onboarding of a new retailer, we are looking to triple our revenue for the next financial year.”

Whilst Shelly was the companies’ first employee, the team has grown massively, as she shared: “We've got a manufacturing team, and that's a team of five or six that are the core of the business.

Shelly's top business tips

FOR those looking to start their own business, Shelly shared her top advice.

She advised: “My tip would be to really stress test the idea and make sure it's something that you think is really foolproof.

“Test it as much as you can talk to as many people as possible. Don't be shy about people saying ‘that's rubbish’.”

Shelly stressed that perseverance is key, as she recommended: “You have to be strong. You have to really be headstrong about your idea and not worry about other people's opinions so much.

“Take it all in. Of course you know you have to be balanced, but just be really confident about what you're doing and just keep going.

“You're gonna have so many doors shut on you, but don't worry. There's always another door that's gonna open somewhere down the line.”

“Then we've got a sales and marketing team, which is a team of three, and that includes myself. We're still a very slim team.

“And then we have another marketing team that focuses on things like PR social media, which is so key to any business. So that's the triage of our business.”

Shelly explained that thanks to the success of BANG! Curry, her life has totally changed.

With the onboarding of a new retailer, we are looking to triple our revenue for the next financial year

She revealed: “The biggest attraction for having your own business is to be able to determine your own hours.

“It's not an eight hour job - sometimes it's 12 hours, sometimes it’s what it has to be if you want to drive the business forward, you just have to put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it.

“But if my child has a sports day, I can take time out. I can work around that and this is where I really love what I do and the working arrangement I have.

“[My life has] completely changed. I've learned so much in terms of how to run a business and how to manage my time well.

“Every day is a learning day, and it's exciting. It's completely changed my life. My personal salary has gone up and up and up.”