Baking is not just a hobby to fill your free time. The industry also offers lucrative career options. Prachi Rege tests the dough.
If you love walking into a party with cupcakes and cookies baked by you; if on weekends you are happy stirring up a delectable batter mixture of chocolate cream and vanilla topped with blueberries, then it`s time to give that baker in you a serious thought.
With the humongous manpower requirement, a career in baking definitely looks to be a promising one. "Every year, around 100,000 small scale bakeries and 1000 industrial plants open in the country," says Raj Kapoor, MD, Assocom Institute of Bakery Technology and Management (AIBTM). The hospitality sector too has a huge demand for pastry chefs and bakers.
AIBTM is a Noida-based newly launched bakery institute offering diploma and post graduate programmes. Its curriculum has been designed in association with the International School of Baking, America Society of Baking (ASB) and Hyejeon College, South Korea. Professionals from food producing giants like Britannia, Parle-G and Monginis have helped in designing the course curriculum. "Though baking is popular in India, most of us are not familiar with the scientific and professional approach required to excel in the field," informs Kapoor.
Keeping in mind the need for skilled manpower, AIBTM will train aspiring bakers in business aspects like quality control, procurement of raw material, setting up a bakery unit or plant, marketing and sales of bakery products, etc, besides basic skills like mixing, stirring and baking. "We want to develop students for multitasking," explains Kapoor.
National and international food scientists and technologists, professional quality control managers and baking entrepreneurs will train students in various aspects of the craft. The course is open to aspirants as well as traditional bakers, chefs and technicians, who are already in the business and who may enrol for the special, five-week skill upscaling programme that includes subjects like healthy bakery, flour milling and food laws and regulatory environment.
Affiliated to the City & Guilds, London, Bangalore-based Lavonne Academy of Baking Science and Pastry Arts is an institute launched by three chefs, who wanted to use their expertise to provide hotels with skilled bakers. Lavonne gives their students an opportunity to display their baking skills. Professional chefs are called on the campus at regular intervals to facilitate this.
"We have tie ups with hotels like the Hilton and Royal Orchid for student internships and placements," says Chef Vinesh Johnny, co-founder of Lavonne. Though there are many skilled bakers, big set ups always pick up specialized professionals who design and present their work attractively. "This is where we come in.”
From working at a hotel as a pastry chef to being an entrepreneur with your own bakery unit, the bakery field provides you with a wide range of options that may be more tempting than even the tongue-tickling goodies it has to offer.
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Bake it up!
You need approximately:
Rs 10,000 to set up a personal bakery
Rs 5 to 25 lakhs for a big commercial set up
Rs 25 lakh to a crore to set up a bakery plant
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Earn it!
Work-from-home baker with a certification can earn Rs 8000 to 15000
Diploma holder can make Rs 15000 to Rs 30000
Post graduate who can also be employed as a manager will earn - Rs 30,000 upwards
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Institutes across the country:
