Rooting For A Cause

A start-up is leveraging nostalgia and memories to connect those who have moved away from their homes through food and air cargo.

- Tirthanakar Ghosh

You yearn for that special fish preparation that is available only in a few Kolkata restaurants but you are in Delhi, a good 1500 km by road or a two-hour flight away? Short of visiting Kolkata to satiate your tastebuds, the only option is to contact ‘Justmyroots.com’.

Brainchild of the Sengupta couple, Promita and Samiran, Justmyroots is a start-up that is all set to shake up the Food Pandas, Swiggys or Zomatos – all online food delivery services that operate in a 6-8 km radius – and change the way the Indian middle class looks at food – in no small measure to air connectivity. The Senguptas are bringing Kolkata delicacies to tables in and around Delhi, Bengaluru and Jaipur before going pan-Indian and even overseas to cater to the huge Bengali diaspora.

The Sengupta couple believe that modern life and its fast pace, has taken a toll on “our social life that has estranged communities, sending them to distant lands in search of a better livelihood. However, these moves by communities have brought in their wake a sense of nostalgia. Today, food is the strongest link that strengthens the social bond and this is what the Senguptas want to leverage.

The first of its kind venture in India, Justmyroots is, according to Promita Sengupta, the world’s first community based e-commerce technology platform where vendors from different communities can sell their products. “The essence of our organisation,” said

Sengupta, “has been the connection to our roots. With requests from people belonging to different communities to have access to products from their respective roots, we announced Justmyroots.com.”