As a consumer, I have never enjoyed eating pizza out of a box. Thanks to the way it is delivered, it is soggy and loses much of its flavour by the time you eat it. The problem intrigued me especially as I am a businessman who manufactures corrugated boxes, apart from other industrial products.

Then, one day, eight years ago, I had my ‘eureka’ moment. I was driving on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and thinking about the pizza I had eaten the previous night. It was the same old story. This time, even as I pondered the conundrum, a solution sprang to mind.

I took the corrugated box in which I stored my cassettes and CDs in the car, pulled out a pocket knife and started working on the box. In about 30 minutes, I had a solution—yes, it was possible! That’s where my journey with my brand VENTiT started.

My design is simple. Hot food releases steam, which when obstructed leads to condensation. This is absorbed by the food, as a result of which it becomes cold and soggy. Food needs to breathe when it is delivered. The innovation ensures that the heat doesn’t escape; only the water vapour or moisture does. Hence, the food not only remains hot but is also not soggy. The upshot is that it is also an eco-friendly product and can be recycled.

Although the design came to me in an instant, it took over seven years to put it out in the market as I waited to patent it first. The next step was adapting the design to the delivery of other food items such as dosas, parathas and even jalebis.

In 2014, a gentleman from the US, Scott Wiener, called my office and asked about the box. A pizza connoisseur who conducts pizza tours in Manhattan, Wiener asked how the box worked. So I sent him some samples. Wiener published a book on pizza boxes from around the world, and in all his interviews, he said the world’s best pizza box was not made by an Italian but an Indian!

Then, last year, an Indian PhD student from Amsterdam got in touch with me and said he wanted to study our box as part of his thesis on ‘thermo-fluid dynamics’. To be honest, I had no clue what it meant but it is essentially about the movement of air. We spoke on Skype and I was happy to help him. I had a simple question for him: With the release of steam, shouldn’t the pizza turn cold owing to a drop in temperature? I had my own explanation for it but wanted a scientific one. A month later, I received a 40-page explanation! It was too much for me, so he later sent me a video explaining it.

Indeed, I’ve always loved experimenting; when I was a young chap, I had installed speakers on my bike by connecting them to the bike battery. I could listen to music on the go and drew a lot of attention when I took my bike out for a spin! My pizza box idea was a natural outcome of this creative restlessness. We’ve got a number of awards for our design and, of course, there is a sense of satisfaction that comes with it. I am 62 now and working towards marketing the product in various places. I want consumers to know what is available out there and demand it. If this product were from another country, people would be lining up for it. Things are changing gradually but it is still a challenge.

—Vinay Mehta, Mumbai

Photograph by Shail D
Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
October 2016