Happy Anniversary Anila

It's 20 years since Anila Vaghela sold her first jar of homemade curry sauce at an Easter fair in Weybridge, Surrey. Now a supplier of award-winning curry sauces, chutneys and pickles to top delis, speciality stores and farm shops across the UK, Anila's Authentic Sauces is unveiling a new product to mark the occasion.

The spicy Indian salsa is handmade with fresh ingredients; a delicious blend of tomatoes, red peppers, green chillies and spices, the salsa is the perfect accompaniment to Anila's range of eight authentic curry sauces.

"I started by using old traditional family recipes and I still use them today as the basis of my products, 20 years on," said Anila Vaghela. "We continue to make our curry sauces and accompaniments in small batches. The new spicy Indian salsa is also based on a family recipe, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with our customers."

Growing up as the eldest child and grandchild in the family, Anila learnt to cook alongside her mother, her grandmothers and her great grandmother while they were living in Zimbabwe. Years later, as a busy mum living in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, Anila would make large batches of curry sauce for convenience. Her cooking had always been popular with friends and family, and in the early 1990s she began selling jars of curry sauce on a very small scale in her local community. She sold all 80 jars at her first fair at Easter in Weybridge in 1992. Phone calls from very satisfied customers followed, and Anila began fulfilling small orders.

In 1997 she was made redundant from her job as a PA and decided to seize the opportunity to form her own company to develop Anila's Authentic Sauces. Before long Anila's curry sauces were on the shelves of a range of health stores, delicatessens and independent specialist shops.

Anila outgrew her kitchen at home and moved to a catering kitchen in Surbiton in 2002. A year later the business needed larger premises once more, and Anila's re-located to a 1400 sq ft unit in Hounslow. In 2006, husband Dan also joined the team as operations manager and is in charge of production, whilst Anila takes care of sales & marketing.

"It's amazing to think that it's been 20 years since I made my first proper sale," said Anila. "At the time, Indian food wasn’t anywhere near as popular as it is today, and there were very few small producers like myself, only large manufacturers supplying the supermarkets. I started with four flavours of curry sauce – additional sauces and the chutneys and pickles came later as a result of demand from customers."

"I was 40 when I was made redundant, and having set up my own business, I haven’t looked back. Since I was a child I have had a great love of food and of cooking, and it's been a dream come true to run Anila's."