Shelly Nuruzzaman is an entrepreneur and co-founder of BANG! Curry, the Brick Lane-inspired meal kits that have taken the UK by storm.
BANG! is considered the best-selling curry set on Amazon. Curry has sold over 750,000 kits in its first five years, garnered millions of likes and views on social media and has recently become available in Waitrose stores nationwide — the first major retailer to list the brand.
Each set is made from 100% natural ingredients and comes in a cardboard bag containing the appropriate spice mix, base mix and dry ingredients. To simplify the cooking process, each set follows the same three-step process of “Prepare,” “Season,” “Cook.” Packed with recipe ideas and tips on how consumers can prepare their own dish, BANG! curry gives home cooks the confidence to create fresh, Brick Lane-inspired meals in their kitchen.
The range includes kits to prepare authentic curries such as korma, jalfrezi, tikka, dahl and bhuna, as well as kits to prepare delicious side dishes such as bhajis, samosas and pakoras.
What was the inspiration behind BANG! Curry?
I grew up on Brick Lane in London in the heart of the Bangladeshi community and spent my childhood surrounded by food. Both at home with my mother, who spent hours playing around in the kitchen, transforming the simplest of ingredients into something truly special, and in my community, eating at the curry houses on Brick Lane, as my father was friends with all the restaurant owners.
Growing up and cooking for myself, I was frustrated by the poor quality of products available to consumers. I felt like they had been done a really disservice and that they deserved something much better. In the UK, curry is a very popular dish and consumers are true curry connoisseurs. However, cooking curry by pouring it from a jar has become the norm.
I wanted to recreate my mother’s curry making, but in a simple way and show that it doesn’t take much more effort to prepare authentic dishes and still have a real feeling of enjoyment.
As much as I love how my mother put time and love into her food, that isn’t the reality for many families. Life is a lot busier these days and most people simply don’t have the bandwidth to cook for hours on end.
Our BANG! Curry sets contain the appropriate spice mix, base mix and dry ingredients. They take care of the complicated work of making a curry dish and leave customers to follow simple three-step instructions to make amazing meals from scratch at home.
Who do you admire?
It must be my mother. She is such a strong, smart woman. When she moved from a comfortable life in Bangladesh to 1970s England, she experienced great hardship. It wouldn’t be for the faint of heart, but she changed her destiny through sheer hard work and determination. She is still an absolute powerhouse today and I feel lucky to have had her as a role model my entire life.
Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
Although the road hasn’t always been smooth, we are a product of what we’ve been through and that’s why I don’t want to change a thing. It made me who I am today.
To be honest, I never thought I would do this — as a young girl I was anything but traditional and so starting a cooking-related curry business wasn’t really in the cards. But life happens in strange ways, and somehow you end up exactly where you’re supposed to.
What defines your way of doing business?
It’s still strange to think of myself as an entrepreneur. It’s been a long journey to get here and it’s been completely organic, so I’ve never decided how I want to do business; Everything has evolved over time.
Since we are in the food sector, the quality of the product can really make the difference between success and failure. My focus has always been on creating the best products possible and while we have built a successful brand in terms of sales and listings, I have never become complacent in this area and never will. We distinguish our products by responding to customer feedback. We are constantly improving and I don’t think I will ever stop believing that there is room for improvement. This gave us an edge in terms of taste, quality and end product.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Test the validity of your idea because you need to put every ounce of energy into your vision. In the very early days of BANG! did exactly the same thing. Curry. I needed to prove that the concept worked and that people were interested in making Indian dishes in their own kitchen, so I taught group cooking classes from home. They were very popular and confirmed to me that there would be demand, so I then put all the profits from the courses back into product development and tested them at farmers markets to get customer feedback that would help me refine the recipes. Business doesn’t happen overnight; You need resilience and it can be hard.
