Artinci-Artisanal Ice creams and Equality

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Where local ingredients and a love for ice creams come together to create equal opportunities.

“We celebrate food, and we celebrate people.”

I was seated across from Aarti Laxman Rastogi, founder of Artinci Artisanal Ice Creams and we had just finished talking about a lot of things- ice creams, ice cream flavours, dark chocolate (of course!), people, equality and what it means to be connected to the source of your ingredients. I asked her how would she summarize Artinci, when she said the above line. Once you read her story, you will realize that there is no better way to put it. Meet Artinci.

Where talent strategy meets food

Aarti is a trained corporate HR professional and has worked in this field for more than 15 years. Her last role was in talent strategy and managing inclusion/diversity programs for Accenture, India. Stepping into the world of food, however, was always the plan- she shares. “Ever since I began my HR career, I knew that it was not the career I wanted to retire from. My interest was always in the area of food. The plan was to shift gears at some point. In 2017 I felt that it was time to make the shift. Through the 15 years I was in corporate, I was dabbling in a couple of trials on my own with respect to food. I wanted to see what would be a natural fit for me.“

Aarti’s natural fit turned out to be our favourite form of dessert, and our favourite comfort food rolled into one scoop- ice cream. “Mall sessions with my daughter would usually end with a scoop of ice cream. I remember this one time it was pretty late, and the kiosk was closing when we got there to order ice cream. There was this dull scraping noise as the person behind the counter was trying to get the last bit of the ice cream from the tub, which was dry and obviously artificially flavoured. That’s when it struck me that I could make ice cream at home for my daughter using all natural ingredients. That weekend I made my first batch of ice cream and fell in love with the process.“

This was in 2012. Over the next few years, Aarti worked on several batches of ice cream at home creating some wonderful flavours for her friends and family. In July 2017 she registered her ice cream company and opened Artinci’s doors.

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Employment and Equality

“Interweaving my HR career, my talent strategy experience and what we do at Artinci, one of our employment missions is to provide opportunities for persons with disabilities and people from the LGBT community,” says Aarti talking about her bigger goals with her venture. Artinci works with Enable India and the Solidarity Foundation for this.  “Our team is currently ten people strong of which three are from the Solidarity Foundation and the rest from Enable India,” Aarti adds.

“We actively seek out those who don’t get looked at as the first choice for a job, especially in the food industry. We want to provide them with employability skills. For that matter, ice cream making is an easy skill to teach someone. But through this process of skill transfer, we have met many people who are enthusiastic about food, gaining steady employment and learning more skills.  People don’t realize that such opportunities have an impact beyond the individual. It has a big effect on how their families perceive them. As we increase Artinci’s team strength, we hope more individuals will come forward.  The repeal of section 377 is a big win for us and the organizations we work with. We hope more people will realize that finding the right employee is about focusing on what an individual can do and not on what they cannot,” Aarti shares. As someone with a hearing disability, Aarti adds that she has a personal stake in this whole approach. 

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Ingredients That Matter

Artinci represents a sustainable food venture in more than one way. On their website, the team states that you will not find a Madagascar vanilla flavour or cocoa from Ghana in their products. “You don’t need to look outside the country when you have so much biodiversity within. Wherever possible, we want to use local ingredients. I have access to some great sustainably grown coffee from Karnataka’s Western Ghats, and vanilla and cocoa that grow in Kerala’s Western Ghats. Our dark chocolate flavour is a bestseller, and we have always received high appreciation for it.  We will never have a Belgian Chocolate on our shelves, simply because we have this awesome cocoa grown and processed right here in India, that too within 500 miles,” Aarti elaborates.

Artinci team takes pride in not just highlighting the local ingredients but also in making sure they are treated the right way. Another Artinci popular flavour, the roasted almond ice cream is made by working with raw almonds. Almonds are peeled, roasted and then turned to almond butter which goes into the ice cream. Their coffee ice cream is made by steeping ground coffee beans in the ice cream mix overnight, and processing it the next day. “That’s the kind of long road we take in developing and processing our ice creams. The definition of premium is not just a claim to fame. We have formulated our ice creams with real dairy to have that premium quality- a creamy mouthfeel that is every bit authentic,” Aarti adds proudly. 

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Plans Ahead

Artinci currently has a central production space near Hoodi circle and a retail kiosk in a residential community in Whitefield. Their products are available on food delivery platforms for locations in and around Whitefield and Marathahalli. The team works with corporates and have a couple of kiosks in corporate cafeterias. Artinci also takes orders for events. Along with ice creams, you will find nut butters on their product list.

Aarti hopes to make Artinci products available throughout Bangalore. The team will soon be adding sundaes, milkshakes, thick shakes and new gourmet flavour combinations to their growing product list. Needless to say that the ice cream base for the shakes will have all natural ingredients and the shakes come with a no-syrup promise. As Artinci grows and builds a reputation, Aarti shares that she would like to build a community through her venture where ethical growers of ingredients can directly work with her.

For Artinci it is about people, food, and the people who make the food. They do celebrate it all.

For more information visit https://artinci.myshopmatic.com/home.

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