How These Cakery And Life Partners Are Doing Their Bit For Queer Community

Our society often celebrates the love that abides by age-old, boxed narratives of how relationships are meant to be. While we're moving above and beyond these limitations, there's still so much to do with respect to shifting perspectives. A story for ages, we bring to you Punjab's Manpriya and Navneet, two entrepreneurs who are also partners, and are changing the set standards of 'how it's supposed to be'.

Running their cakery called Caked India, the duo are empowering women and members of the queer community in more ways than one. In conversation with SheThePeople, Manpriya discusses her entrepreneurial journey, how a business idea led her to find her life partner, and how by hiring queer people she sets a clear narrative about representation.

Manpriya and Navneet

"I hail from a small town called Nabha in Punjab and setting up a cakery was never part of the plan. Growing up, I was crazy about films. After completing my bachelor's from DU, I moved to Europe to learn filmmaking. But staying there,  things did not seem to click. I quickly realised that I wanted to do something of my own in my own country. One day my brother called to inform me that they were planning to start a bread-making business and asked if I wanted to join in. I didn’t hesitate and said yes immediately!

I was fascinated by the women who were going out and conquering the world. I wanted the women from our local community to be empowered too! So gradually, we started employing only rural women and trained them in the art of baking bread. Things were going well as these women put their hearts and soul into learning and executing everything we taught them.

One day my dad went to the city for some work and there he saw a big lion-shaped cake. He was so inspired that he wanted us to make a similar cake. It took us 2 days to make it but that cake was my ‘Eureka’ moment! I realised I wanted to start a bakery of my own, and not in Nabha, but in Chandigarh. But the struggle was that we knew no one there.

That’s when Navneet stepped in! I met Navneet on tinder when I first came back from Europe and we had remained friends. I asked her to help us find a place. She was in Delhi at that time but she travelled back to Chandigarh and helped us find the place and set up the bakery.

Challenges began once we started operations and had to manage creativity as well. Everyone wanted a unique and new cake design for their special occasions. There were mistakes and failures, several sleepless nights and breakdowns but we persevered. Navneet helped me in every aspect of the bakery and slowly the cakery partnership turned into love.

The first time we came out as gay to our families, the reactions were scary! Coming from small towns, people blamed me for misguiding Navneet. Our families stopped talking to us. We realised how tough it was for two women, queer at that, to achieve our dreams in this society!

So we decided to give opportunities to other people like us and started hiring queer people for our cakery. Despite all the struggles, we never gave up and after 6 years, we can finally say that we did it. We empowered women and queer people and established our brand. We are doing what makes us happy. And who knows, someday, I might make a film about our story!"

Narrated by Manpriya. Written by Bhavika Mittal, Team SheThePeople

Suggested reading: Married On Their Babies’ Birthday, Meet The Couple Who Made A Family Based On Love