Naksha's UK-made range include both savoury and sweet (baking) dishes, encouraging users to discover and cook off-the-beaten-track cuisines in their own home kitchens.
First launched by Nisha Ramisetty and her husband Sam Williams in Dubai back in 2020, Naksha quickly gained traction by winning the prestigious Spinneys and Waitrose Local Business Incubator and has been listed in Spinneys and Waitrose stores in the UAE ever since.
Naksha's arrival in the UK in June 2023 is shaking up the cooking experience of UK home-chefs by redefining store-bought, shelf-stable recipe kits. With whole, small-batch ingredients, authentic local recipes, and original hand-drawn artwork by emerging artists, Naksha's kits prove simplicity and convenience are compatible with premium look-and-feel and gastronomic wow-factor. Kits suit weekdays, special occasions and gifting, too.
According to co-founder Nisha Ramisetty, Naksha is solving the problems of cooking inspiration and accessibility.
“Many people want to cook more often but can find themselves struggling to keep their menu varied,” she points out. “At the same time, many tempting cuisines are perceived to be far too complex, expensive or wasteful to cook at home. At Naksha we tackle these apparent problems by curating recipes from amazing places and giving customers the specialist ingredients they'll require to cook them without waste or fuss. UK consumers are hungry to cook food with engaging origin stories, and we're here to feed that appetite.”
Arranged in regional collections, Naksha's recipe kits give customers an immersive cooking experience encompassing great flavours, thoughtful storytelling, stunning packaging, and simple cooking methodology.
The recipe kits focus on cuisines with strong appeal but which currently suffer from limited visibility, looking beyond the predictable world of Mexican, Thai and Indian. Naksha's kits instead bring to life dishes from countries such as Cuba (Ropa Vieja), Singapore (Lemak Cili Padi), Turkey ((Dark chocolate fondant with Turkish coffee), Jamaica (Curried Goat) and Lebanon (Milk chocolate blondies with Lebanese tahini); meeting demand for international food which - according to a recent Waitrose & Partners report – is growing rapidly in the UK.
Naksha kits are also vegan-friendly as they don't include perishable ingredients. Instead, the shelf-stable products include easy recipe cards and specialist ingredients such as spice blends, herbs, grains, noodles, sauces and other extras. The fresh items (i.e. veg and protein) that a customer needs to complete the dish are easily obtainable as part of a normal weekly shop, maximising choice and flexibility. Customers aren't locked into costly commitments, yet, thanks to Naksha's diverse range, they can access a multitude of flavours. Most of Naksha's recipe kits are also gluten free and contain organic ingredients.
Naksha is based between London and Brighton and has manufacturing facilities in Derbyshire.