23-year old Son of Pune’s Budhani Bros Waferwala works on 6 projects with different organizations and bags opportunities in the coffee and education industries

Dariya Budhani comes from the business family of Budhani Bros Waferwala, a 6 decades old business which is one of the largest manufacturers of wafers in India. 

Since childhood, Dariya was interested as well as encouraged (by his family) to go beyond the plain walls of formal academic education and get himself exposed to a variety of co-curricular activities such as dance, sports and painting. 

In 2018, Dariya started pursuing his Bachelors in Mathematics at Fergusson College, Pune and parallelly also started to volunteer for Nature Lovers, a youth led environmental awareness and community service based organization, based in Pune. Over the 2 years of his involvement he helped with organizing and planning events, volunteering for sessions, brainstorming and discussing ideas to spread environmental awareness in his own city.

As he was getting closer to graduating from college, Dariya found himself at cross-points where he had to pick his next steps. He was brainstorming all possible paths ahead of him- should he pursue an MBA? Should he look for a job? Or should he start working with his family business?

That’s when Pratik Kela, the founder of Nature Lovers, recommended Dariya to join Enterprise India Fellowship, a programme where he could learn business and entrepreneurial skills in an experiential way from entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Throughout the fellowship, he worked on 9+ projects including 3 Enterprise in-house projects like #karo, and 6 client projects with organizations like  Total Coffee – an e-commerce platform for coffee & one of India’s leading coffee startups, and Thrills and Trails – an organization that facilitates experiences for special needs families.

“Dariya is very curious and genuinely wants to contribute in a meaningful way to the projects he’s working on. Beyond that too, he’s always up to do more and his curious mind allows him to come up with creative alternatives,” – Ankita Parashar, Co-Lead of the Enterprise India Fellowship.

Dariya ended up working on the Total Coffee project as he was always expressive to the Enterprise team about his interest in the coffee industry. Looking at his curiosity and work ethic while working together on this project, the founder of the company offered him a job at his other company Benki Brewing Tools, which Dariya accepted and moved to Bengaluru for and worked there for 6 months in sales and business development.

Dariya Budhani

Hometown: Pune, Maharashtra

College: Fergusson College, Pune

Subject: Pure Sciences, Mathematics

Interests/Cares About: Being relaxed mentally, Experiential Education, The value of doing, Having clarity in this chaos of abundance of data 

Fellowship Span: Feb 2021-Apr 2022

Fellowship Activities Sneak Peek:

-Worked on 9+ projects including 3 Enterprise in-house projects like #karo, and 6 client projects with organizations like Total Coffee- one of India’s leading coffee startups and Thrills and Trails- an organization that facilitates experiences for special needs families

-Co-designed an ebook to spread awareness on Osteoporosis and worked with JOSH Connect & SMILE Wellness Foundation to support their fundraising efforts for covid relief and science education for children in rural and tribal areas.

Next Step post Fellowship:

– Working as a Marketing Coordinator with the Enterprise India Fellowship

Self Testimonial:

 “Enterprise has shown me how to make my ideas and thoughts into reality. I do not live in an imagination anymore but now I create my own reality. Like the Mangaka makes his reality into his mangas”

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Dariya’s reflections on his self-discovery journey and the major change he witnessed as he worked on multiple real life projects and created her body of work.

“Dariya is a person whose eyes light up when he is faced with a challenge. He loves getting involved in things, thrives on taking on responsibility and challenge, and is always ready to stretch himself to make things happen,” – Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Co-Founder & Co-Lead of the Enterprise India Fellowship.

Along with working on in-house projects at Enterprise and consulting projects with the clients, Dariya also took on the challenge to use the platform to convert an idea into a personal project and built it up from scratch. 

This is when he teamed up with Mustafa Mala, another Enterprise Partner (aka Enterprise students) from the Mala’s business family (one of the top suppliers for fruit syrups in the country) to co-create #Karo Khazana. It was an experience for people to channel their creativity to create their own recipes by using Budhani wafers and Mala’s Syrup.

They put together and co-led a team of new Enterprise Partners to organize and host the experience. 19 people attended and created all sorts of recipes. It was a challenge Dariya and Mustafa took on to explore how they can add value to their well established family, as well as see how they could put an idea into action.

Dariya shares, “Enterprise has shown me how to convert my ideas and thoughts into reality. I do not live in an imagination anymore but now I create my own reality. Like the Mangaka makes his reality into his mangas.”

Considering how valuable engaging with co-curriculars, service and consulting projects parallelly to his education was for him, and how impactful the 468+ hours working on these projects during the Fellowship was for him, Dariya decided to work with the Enterprise India Fellowship to help other young people do the same.

He has joined the team as a Marketing Coordinator to enhance the organization’s outreach efforts and is looking forward to supporting more young people with getting involved in co-curriculars, internships and projects beyond their academics.

“Since day one, Dariya has been someone who loves exploring with complete commitment. He has the desire and hunger to get to the bottom of how things work and then study it to apply it in whatever he does!” –Yusuf Hakim, Co-Founder of the Enterprise India Fellowship.

Interviewer: Nikita Juneja
Author: Rhythm Joshi & Nikita Juneja
Video Editor: Rahul Devkar
Story Editors:  Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Ankita Parashar & Nikita Juneja
Webpage Designer: Dnyanesh Chandewar

Dariya Budhani comes from the business family of Budhani Bros Waferwala, a 6 decades old business which is one of the largest manufacturers of wafers in India. 

Since childhood, Dariya was interested as well as encouraged (by his family) to go beyond the plain walls of formal academic education and get himself exposed to a variety of co-curricular activities such as dance, sports and painting. 

In 2018, Dariya started pursuing his Bachelors in Mathematics at Fergusson College, Pune and parallelly also started to volunteer for Nature Lovers, a youth led environmental awareness and community service based organization, based in Pune. Over the 2 years of his involvement he helped with organizing and planning events, volunteering for sessions, brainstorming and discussing ideas to spread environmental awareness in his own city.

As he was getting closer to graduating from college, Dariya found himself at cross-points where he had to pick his next steps. He was brainstorming all possible paths ahead of him- should he pursue an MBA? Should he look for a job? Or should he start working with his family business?

That’s when Pratik Kela, the founder of Nature Lovers, recommended Dariya to join Enterprise India Fellowship, a programme where he could learn business and entrepreneurial skills in an experiential way from entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Throughout the fellowship, he worked on 9+ projects including 3 Enterprise in-house projects like #karo, and 6 client projects with organizations like  Total Coffee – an e-commerce platform for coffee & one of India’s leading coffee startups, and Thrills and Trails – an organization that facilitates experiences for special needs families.

“Dariya is very curious and genuinely wants to contribute in a meaningful way to the projects he’s working on. Beyond that too, he’s always up to do more and his curious mind allows him to come up with creative alternatives,” – Ankita Parashar, Co-Lead of the Enterprise India Fellowship.

Dariya ended up working on the Total Coffee project as he was always expressive to the Enterprise team about his interest in the coffee industry. Looking at his curiosity and work ethic while working together on this project, the founder of the company offered him a job at his other company Benki Brewing Tools, which Dariya accepted and moved to Bengaluru for and worked there for 6 months in sales and business development.

Dariya Budhani

Hometown: Pune, Maharashtra

College: Fergusson College, Pune

Subject: Pure Sciences, Mathematics

Interests/Cares About: Being relaxed mentally, Experiential Education, The value of doing, Having clarity in this chaos of abundance of data 

Fellowship Span: Feb 2021-Apr 2022

Fellowship Activities Sneak Peek:

-Worked on 9+ projects including 3 Enterprise in-house projects like #karo, and 6 client projects with organizations like Total Coffee- one of India’s leading coffee startups and Thrills and Trails- an organization that facilitates experiences for special needs families

-Co-designed an ebook to spread awareness on Osteoporosis and worked with JOSH Connect & SMILE Wellness Foundation to support their fundraising efforts for covid relief and science education for children in rural and tribal areas.

Next Step post Fellowship:

– Working as a Marketing Coordinator with the Enterprise India Fellowship

Self Testimonial:

 “Enterprise has shown me how to make my ideas and thoughts into reality. I do not live in an imagination anymore but now I create my own reality. Like the Mangaka makes his reality into his mangas”

View Profile