Meet the Founder
Daynand Rajaram Talgaonkar
Nearly eleven months of the year, most of the homes in our part of Konkan are quiet.
Doors locked, courtyard empty.
Then comes Ganesh Utsav or Holi, and then for a few weeks, the tiny lanes of the village fill with human voices again, before falling silent till the next festival.
I just grew up watching that rhythm. I just never questioned it until I had to.
For years I was far away from home, working as a makeup artist in the film industry, building faces for a living, moving between sets, chasing a different kind of life.
Then came the pandemic and everything stopped. The work disappeared overnight. I had nothing to do.
I went back home. Not for a holiday but for good.
Once I was home for longer than a festival week, I saw the reality I would never let myself see before.
It wasn’t just closed doors and quiet houses; it was talent with nowhere to go. Farmers with good produce but no buyers beyond the village, women’s self-help groups making things by hand that deserved a real market.
Young people packing bags for the city because there was nothing here to stay for. An entire way of life, recipes, techniques quietly running out of people to pass it to.
My own family had a piece of that story.
Sitting in our kitchen, the whole time my uncle and aunt had spent years making traditional Malwani masalas, the real kind, ground, pounded and blended the old way with the flavour you don’t get from mass-produced masalas available in the market.
It was extraordinary, but it had never travelled further than our neighbours’ homes.
That’s the moment which became a plan. If a masala this good could sit unknown for years, how many other things like it were hiding in how many other homes?
I realised the problem. The problem wasn’t that Konkan lacked good products. It lacked someone willing to carry them beyond the village.
I discussed the same with my family, and we decided to become that bridge.
I started by working with my uncle and aunt’s masalas. Then we knocked on more doors. We met farmers, home cooks and women’s self-help groups. We tasted, listened, learnt their stories, and slowly began to build the products together under one name.
That’s how Amrit Girnari began.
The name “Amrit Girnari” reflects our deep-rooted commitment to purity. “Amrit” symbolizes the nectar of life, while “Girnari” honors the natural heritage and traditional wisdom of the Gir and Konkan regions.
It started with a very handful of products and a handful of customers. Word travelled the same way good food always does, from one home to another. As more people began looking for authentic Konkan flavours, what began as a small effort grew into Amrit Girnari Foods LLP.
Every product we now sell comes from someone we can name. A farmer we trust, we buy from directly. A home kitchen that has been perfecting one recipe for decades. A women’s self-help group whose work finally has a buyer beyond the annual village fair.
We make in small batches, the way our own kitchens always did; that’s the only way the flavour stays honest.
It’s not just a spice or masala brand. It’s a bridge that the rural Konkan never had, connecting the small farmers, home cooks and small producers who have kept these traditions alive to the customers who deserve to taste them.
Every pack we send out carries someone’s grandmother’s method, someone’s family’s patience, and a little bit of the smell of the Konkan soil itself.
Every pack you order is a small vote for that, for a farmer, a home kitchen or a women’s group in Konkan getting paid for the work that deserved it years ago.
Browse what we are making right now, and test the difference that small batch actually makes.
Our promise –
The taste of tradition.
The identity of Konkan’s soil.