Natasha Aggarwal CEO, Mama Mia Group

At 24, Natasha Aggarwal balances her youthful exuberance with a keen business sense. She is CEO of the Mama Mia Group of gelateria outlets (ice cream parlours, for those who need a translation) across the country. Almost all her employees are older than she is. And when Aggarwal says she has earned their respect, she means it. But it hasn’t been easy.

There were no indications of the things to come during her schooldays at Loreto House in Calcutta. She was just like any other girl, her ambitions fluctuating between the magnificent and the trivial. The only exciting thing Aggarwal did during her school life was to help her father in his business. Her father owned the Rollick brand of ice creams, popular in eastern India. “I used to work behind the counter making scoops of ice-creams,” chuckles Aggarwal. “My mother used to give me Rs 5 for that.”

After completing her higher secondary from Calcutta International School, Aggarwal went on to graduate in business management from Warwick University, UK.

Her big moment arrived when she got to do her summer internship at Ford Motors. And guess what she did? She quit after a month. Says Aggarwal: “I realised I did not wish to work under anybody. I may have been working for one of the best companies in the world. But that did not give me any satisfaction.”

After her one-month stint at Ford, she decided to stay away from further internships. Instead, she focused on checking out what “new” products could be introduced in India. Her family genes came calling and she zeroed in on ice-cream.

Aggarwal felt that the ice-cream category in India had not seen adequate innovation.“Ice cream has always has been positioned for kids,” she says. “Eating ice-cream was never considered a family’s idea of eating out. While the West had some internationally-famous brands such as Ben & Jerry’s and Haagen Dazs, Indians have not really paid attention to this dessert.”

Aggarwal studied some of the well-known brands but she wasn’t sure which one to bring to India. To add to this, her decision to start an ice cream café met with less than enthusiastic response. Aggarwal was determined nonetheless. On a chance vacation in Italy with friends, she discovered gelato. The Italians call their ice-cream gelato and, after tasting it, Aggarwal decided that it was just what she was looking for; she would bring gelato home.

Before coming to India, Aggarwal learnt the whole process of making gelato. In January 2005, she trained under Daniel Ghisalberti, an expert gelato-maker in Bergamo, Italy.

The name Mamma Mia was conceived long before that. “People mistake it to be an Italian collaboration, but I liked the expression which conveyed happiness and was also very Italian,” she says.

Aggarwal applied for a bank loan and started her first outlet in Calcutta in May 2005. “The initial days were crazy. I was the chef, cashier and saleswoman, all rolled into one,” says she.

Like any start-up, Aggarwal too had her fair share of hiccups. But she learnt to handle the stress. With time, she trained people to make gelatos, and hired managers for production, distribution and quality control.

In the one-and-a-half years that she has opened her first outlet, she has expanded to 13 outlets across the country. She rattles off further expansion plans, her new menu designs and her tie-ups. What’s more, she is already facing competition from some well-entrenched players in Mumbai and Bangalore .

But the lady is unfazed. “We were the first to get into gelatos, and it is nice to know that there is competition,” she says. “But while they are perfecting their art, we are going ahead with innovations.”

To be sure that Mama Mia stays ahead of competition, Aggarwal invests a lot of time in coming up with new recipes. She is constantly thinking about the ingredients, design and preparation that will make her customers want more. She also sends her new products to her loyal clientele for their feedback.

Aggarwal likes to de-stress herself by meeting friends, going for movies and travelling. But you just cannot take her away from her gelatos. She is off to Italy to upgrade her gelato-making skills once again. So watch out for a brand new menu.

Based on a conversation with Aparna Harish in Calcutta