Zorba People - Anjali
It may still be early days in her career, but Anjali Kembhavi is wholly focused on mastering her role in New Product Development (NPD) at Zorba Foods.
And it shouldn’t be too difficult, after all she already has two Masters’ degrees to her name at the age of 25!
Anjali’s story begins in her native India. Keen on sciences, this led her to do a Masters’ degree in Biotechnology in Mumbai.
With an interest in food and wanting to gain new experiences in a different country, Anjali was accepted onto another Masters’ degree course, this time in Food Science and Technology at Cardiff Metropolitan University, with a full scholarship from British Council India.
During her course, students had to take on an NPD brief from a food company and by sheer chance, Anjali’s came from Zorba.
She explains: “The brief was around coming up with a vegan dessert, so I came up with the idea of a chocolate mousse and I then had to take it through the various stages of development culminating in presenting my product to Zorba.”
Anjali obviously impressed us because she was then offered a year’s placement as part of her degree where she began to get on-the-job experience of NPD.
This then led to the full-time role she now has with Zorba as our NPD Process Technologist.
This involves everything from taking on new briefs from customers and then scaling them up from the kitchen to the factory and overseeing the quality and other important processes.
Anjali still remembers the thrill of seeing her first product, one of our dips, reach supermarket shelves.
She says: “I could have easily taken samples home from the factory, but I went into the supermarket and bought it. It was very exciting!
“I love my job at Zorba. The people are lovely, and the company has been so supportive, so I couldn’t be happier.”
