Shelly Nuruzzaman is entrepreneur and co-Founder of BANG! Curry, the Brick Lane-inspired meal kits that have taken the UK by storm, selling over 750,000 kits in the first five years and gaining millions of likes and views on social media, with one TikTok video achieving 1.1million views alone, reports columnist Riccha Grrover for Asian Lite International.
Rated 4.7 out of five stars on TrustPilot, established as the best-selling curry kit on Amazon and recently securing a nationwide listing with major retailer Waitrose, Shelly has cracked the code when it comes to creating winning spice hacks and flavour combinations. Previously a scientist, with a PhD in Inertial Confinement Fusion from Imperial College London, Shelly swapped the laboratory for her kitchen, where she spent two years perfecting the formulas for her award-winning BANG! Curry kits.
Shelly Nuruzzaman, said : “Getting just the right blend of 14 or 15 spices right is really tricky. There are so many different combinations and just the smallest tweak can result in a completely different flavour. My children and husband became great taste-testers!”
Growing up in Brick Lane, London, in the heart of the Bangladeshi community, after her parents moved to the UK, Shelly’s childhood was spent surrounded by food. Both at home with her mother, in Shelly’s words, ‘playing around in the kitchen, transforming the simplest of ingredients into something really special’ and in her community, eating at the curry houses that lined Brick Lane as her father was friends with all the restaurant owners.
Shelly continued: “I was really lucky; I got to eat so well when I was younger and became a real foodie. But I also realised how cooking from scratch can be complicated. As a 10-year-old, I couldn’t get my head around all the spices and cooking steps to make a curry dish. To make it easy for me, my mum would arrange a little palette of spices that were the exact, perfect quantity and combination, so I went away knowing I could make something that would taste good.
“I want to give people this same ability with BANG! Curry. Each kit contains the relevant spice mix, base mix and dry ingredients, doing the complicated legwork of a curry dish and leaving consumers to follow simple 3-step instructions to create amazing dishes at home, from scratch. As much as I love how my mum poured time and love into her food, it’s not a reality for many families. Lives are much busier nowadays and most people just don’t have the bandwidth to spend hours cooking.”
After sharing her idea for BANG! Curry with her husband, and immediately settling on a brand name, Shelly bootstrapped the business to get it off the ground, testing recipes in her own kitchen and building the website herself. After product testing at farm food markets for a year and gathering feedback from consumers, BANG! Curry meal kits were born, offering a range unlike anything else available on the UK market.
In 2019, the first online sale was made. Over the pandemic period, although retailer growth plans stalled, BANG! Curry grew by 600% where it gained strong traction with the advent of cooking from home and their following has remained loyal ever since. The brand now has a multi-six figure turnover. BANG! Curry is available via their online shop and Amazon, and launching in 278 Waitrose stores nationwide on 22 July, in what is a milestone year for the start-up.
The range is also expanding, with two new products that launched in July – the Samosa kit, crispy treats stuffed with spicy goodness and oozing with flavour, and the Pakora kit, irresistible snacks packed full of vibrant spices. These join the existing eight-strong product range, including a hearty Dahl kit, moreish onion Bhaji kit along with classics including Makhani curry kit, Madras curry kit and Tikka Masala kit.
Shelly stated: “BANG! brings just that to your kitchen – a bang! This isn’t a stir in sauce or ready-made bhajis you heat up; it’s proper cooking, bursting with flavour. We want people to get stuck in – chopping, stirring and getting their hands dirty, but in simple and easy-to-follow steps.”
Every BANG! Curry kit contains 100% natural ingredients and follows the same 3-step process of ‘Prep It, ‘Spice It’, ‘Cook It’. Brimming with recipe ideas and tips on how consumers can make their dish their own, BANG! Curry gives at-home cooks the confidence to make fresh, Brick Lane-inspired meals in their kitchens.
A mother of two boys, now in their teens, Shelly explained: “When my children were young, it sparked memories of how my mum used to feed me and my sister as children. I wanted to do the same for my family but wanted to find my own hacks to making home-cooked meals quickly. The palette of perfectly-measured-out spices my mum used to give me sparked the idea for BANG! Curry. I wanted to be able to share how to make real, authentic dishes in the same way mum had shared the secret of curry making with me.” BANG! Curry launched in Waitrose stores nationwide in UK on 22 July 2024.
Highly Recommended!