Spice Village offers Germany's Indian expats familiar foods and snacks from home. We show how young entrepreneur Shivam Parikh lives and works in Berlin.
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00:00Hi, I'm Shivam. I'm currently a product manager and I founded Spice Village, an international grocery store
00:06delivering Indian and Asian groceries throughout Germany.
00:22We've all grown up with drinking chai, so this is what we use for masala chai
00:27or with eating these Indian cookies. Everyone in India knows this brand inside out, it's Parle.
00:33The first thing when we came here is we realized that these teas and these snacks,
00:37you know, something that we've grown up with, our parents have grown up with for generations, were not available.
00:43There was a big influx of highly skilled workers from India who were actually missing this Indian food.
00:49One of our favorites, and this is, you know, the cookies that I was talking about earlier,
00:52which definitely reminds everyone of home.
00:54Parleji. I eat parleji with my morning tea.
00:58It's something your kids eat, it's something your dogs eat, it's something everyone has grown up eating.
01:04So what I noticed was a lot of the shop owners, they've been here for 30 plus years,
01:09you know, they still don't have that same emotional connect as we would as new expats.
01:15When you do not have that sentimental touch, you really do not understand what brands
01:21or what sentimental value these brands have, you know, we've grown up with these brands.
01:26One of our main business drivers is definitely our online shop, where we have a mobile experience
01:31as well as a nice website, and that has definitely been instrumental to our growth.
01:37Because, like I said, Indian cooking is voluminous, and you need a lot of ingredients every day.
01:44It has been an unforgiving experience with a lot of mistakes,
01:48with selecting the wrong delivery partners, to not packing the orders in the right way,
01:54to not delivering on time.
01:57A lot of times, you know, when they are newly moved expats, they see us moving around,
02:02they see us speaking in English, speaking in Hindi, speaking in our native languages,
02:07and that's when it brings them a little bit of a home feeling.
02:10And we hope that people do feel comfortable to come to us and ask us whatever they like, you know.
02:15Regarding housing, regarding visa, regarding groceries, regarding jobs, regarding IT, whatever.
02:21The reason was not, again, just to drive business or just to get customers here,
02:25but also just to have an emotional connect with the customer.
02:28Just so that they are able to come here, have a small snack, have some masala chai,
02:32have some mango lassi, buy some groceries that they've been craving for days or maybe weeks.
02:37These biscuits, it's almost like an Indian emotion.
02:41Setting up a business anywhere in the world is a task.
02:46In Germany, it is definitely a little bit more of a difficult task.
02:50Not just, you know, the languages, I would say, once again, a small issue of the larger issues that people face.
02:59You know, things are quite slow, and there are certain rules which are hard to understand for an expat.
03:09And just navigating those red tapes and bureaucracies is an extremely daunting and terrifying job.
03:17I do believe that there's still a lot of scope for support.
03:20And this support from the government and institutions, I understand, can be quite limited.
03:29And, you know, your partners are important.
03:31And, you know, as they say, if you want to walk fast, you walk alone.
03:35But if you want to walk further, you walk with someone.
03:40It's a stressful thing to run a business, and there's no working hours.
03:44I think you have to be obsessed.
03:46If you want to be a freelancer, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to be obsessed.
03:50That's the only way I can put it.
03:51First thing that comes to your mind is you sacrifice a lot of your mental health.
03:55Because the stress and pressure you put yourself under.
03:58For a first-time founder, that can be, you know, quite a difficult journey.
04:03And that's, again, coming back to you need someone to do this, you know, walk this path with.
04:08But, for me, that has been the biggest sacrifice, you know.
04:12Not taking a break.
04:14Trying to always get up when you fall.
04:18A place that we come to quite often whenever we want to unwind, we want to relax.
04:23We want to walk the dog, play with the dog.
04:26We find this to be quite a relaxing place to also read a book.
04:32And just unwind from, you know, the computer and from work and so on.
04:37We've learned this the hard way that, you know, we need to make sure that we take time out.
04:42Even if we have a busy day.
04:44Even if we feel we need to keep the momentum going at work.
04:49Paddle, for me, is a great way to, you know, not just get some exercise.
04:54But also, you know, divert my mind from a lot of the other, you know, stressful tasks that come ahead of us every day.
05:03It really helps me unwind. It helps me get some exercise.
05:06I've also met some really, really nice people while playing paddle.
05:10The more competitive it gets, the more fun it gets.
05:20We are at a community garden just on the outskirts of Berlin.
05:23There's a lot of small pieces of land here that have been rented out to people like us.
05:30You know, people like city dwellers who want to, you know, grow some plants, who want to grow some vegetables.
05:37So living in the city center with the hustle bustle of Berlin and the kind of work life that we have.
05:45A desk job, you know, in front of our screens.
05:48We want to give ourselves a break.
05:51Go away from the, you know, digital life and do something hands on and in a green space.
05:58Yeah, I mean, one of the main reasons I left entrepreneurship and moved to a full time job was,
06:04I believed that we achieved what we wanted to achieve at Spice Village on a personal level.
06:10We were able to create a community. We were able to create a social impact.
06:16We were able to, you know, also create a sustainable business.
06:20And that's where, you know, my wife and I decided to draw the line that, you know, we are happy with this growth.
06:26We're happy with what we've achieved.
06:28Of course, you know, you can achieve a lot more, but now maybe it's time for a new challenge.
06:33My advice to young entrepreneurs is to get up and get going.
06:36There's only so much planning you can do.
06:38You will fall, you will trip, but that's the best way to learn.