After spending 20 years in various fields, Farida Taher found her true passion in baking, becoming a successful pastry chef and entrepreneur. She founded her company and developed  the popular ‘Mad Crumbel’ recipe. Now, as she teaches the tricks of baking, Farida credits her success to the unwavering support of her family.

Farida Taher is a professional Pastry Chef, Recipe Developer, Pastry Consultant and Instructor, and Content Creator. She is the founder of ‘Wild Sugar', a trademark company in Mysore, and also the creator of the world famous  ‘Mad Crumbel’ recipe.

The creator of the popular Mad Crumbel, Farida claims that it was her own creation. This garnered a lot of attention from her clients as well as her students. This was her own unique product, and initially, she had planned to make a brand out of it. But, due to the increased demand for the product, a lot of students regularly requested that she teach them the recipe for Mad Crumbel. Hence, Farida decided to help people monetize her invention. As a mentor, this was a very personal achievement for her, where she was directly helping her students learn and earn out of her recipes.

Farida Taher mentions that people have set up Mad Crumbel kiosks all over the world, and the product is a huge hit in the market. According to her, launching Mad Crumbel was more of a journey for her, which included a lot of learning and experimentation. Calling herself a ‘Mad Scientist’, she likes to connect with people from her fraternity and earn from them as well.

A celebrated pastry chef, Farida shares that this profession takes a lot of courage to keep going. She believes that apart from baking skills, it requires a lot of other skills to survive in this field and do extraordinarily well.

Apart from this, Farida is also a pastry consultant, where she helps people set up patisseries and cafes and even mentors students who wish to pursue baking as a full-time profession. She also sells pastries on a pre-order basis as well. She is a content creator too and likes to do the photography for her content herself which  generates a lot of online content.

Working in the baking field for the past seven years, Farida was a GMAT-GRE trainer in the past. Established in 2017, her brand, ‘Wild Sugar’ started with protein bars. Being a state-level powerlifter, Farida was always into healthy eating and baking. She used to go to the gym regularly, where she always felt the need for healthy protein bars every now and then. Hence, she started making some of those on her own.

After 10 trials, she finally got her recipe right for the protein bars and sold 10 kilograms of protein bars in one month. Eventually, she developed a passion for baking and experimenting with food recipes. Thus, she decided to take professional training to explore the scope of this field. She took courses from Whitecaps International School of Pastry and Lavonne Academy of Baking Science and Pastry Arts and upgraded herself with certifications from various international courses.

Even before COVID-19, she was selling a lot of cakes already. After COVID, her business escalated, and hence she decided to pursue this field as a full-time career. Farida shares that seven years ago, Mysore did not have many cafes and good bakers. Hence, she started doing a lot of business with her premium offerings through her cloud kitchen. She has always believed in adding the highest quality ingredients and providing the best possible services while always adding something extraordinary to her recipes.

Soon, people started approaching her to teach them about this art. Already from a teaching background, she decided to try her hands on this too. Skeptical in the beginning, she worked on her training skills again and made herself comfortable enough in front of the camera to engage with the audience. Soon, she launched her first online class and never looked back again. For the last four years, she has been giving online classes in this field, where she gives two to three classes per month.

Born and brought up in Chennai, Farida Taher completed her education there itself. She completed her graduation with a BA in Psychology and Sociology degree from the prestigious Stella Maris College in Chennai. However, Farida mentions that she never found her calling in the subject she was pursuing there.

Married at the age of 19, Farida decided to take a few years off. Later, she joined a wood manufacturing company, where she learned to design furniture, client interaction, and marketing as well. Marketing was always her forte, as she always loved to connect and interact with people. While working there, she got an offer to work as a Skills Trainer at Infosys. There, she learned to train people, connecting and brainstorming with them. After that, she also worked as a GMAT-GRE trainer at the Princeton Review for a few years.

In her later years, she joined a gym and started powerlifting as well as baking. Now, she trains people, is a pastry consultant and entrepreneur, and has a good client base in Mysore today.

Talking about her mother as a role model, Taher shares that her mother has always pushed her to do good. She is her business consultant, who runs the business with her. Farida’s mother dealt in marble and granite and hence had the business acumen that Farida lacked earlier. Her mother knew well about client interaction and the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur, and thus she has elevated and alleviated a lot of things in Farida’s life and career. Farida shares that being an entrepreneur is a very lonely journey where she has to hustle and deliver her best every day. Hence, her mother has always given her a clear picture, guided her, and boosted her up time and again.

Farida shares that rather than merely thinking about something, we have to  take the plunge to go ahead in life. In her case, the first step was the hardest, but she decided to take the plunge. Her parents always motivated, supported and helped her make her dreams come true.

Sharing her favorite songs that always pump her up, Farida shares that her favorite lines come from a song that reads,

“You can win if you want. If you want it, you will win. On your way, you will see that life is more than fantasy.”

She always listens to this song frequently, which gives her quick childhood flashbacks about how her mother brought her up and all those memories are reflected through this song for her. This song gives her the motivation to go for her goals.

Talking about her achievements, Farida Taher says that she does not believe in competition. Being a state-level powerlifter, she has won medals for her state, but she believes that she is not a very competitive person. Farida feels that she does not want to prove herself to anyone or seek validation from anyone else. Rather, if her students are happy, her clients are happy, she feels very content with that.

Advising her students, Farida suggests that there is no quick fix to succeed in business. One must be ready to make sacrifices, and shed blood, sweat, and tears, and have a good support system and a strategy in place to succeed in business. She says that we must be ready to face challenges, as nothing comes easy. Taher suggests that on social media, everybody tries to show only the good parts. Even though she is shy about showing her weaknesses on social media, she is afraid to be judged by people as her journey is very personal to her. She always tells her students that ‘Success is not a thing that comes to us overnight.’ She advocates for consistency and finding the motivation towards your goals.

Farida laments that today’s youth lack patience and always long for overnight success. She regrets that the number of followers on social media has become a topic of interest nowadays, and we even judge a person based on it. She thinks that we must respect people for the work they do, irrespective of how many followers they have on social media. She advises that having a social media presence is certainly not equal to the value people add to our lives. Farida believes that as long as we are happy and content with our lives, numbers don’t matter.

If one tries to reach out to more people and be more visible, it is certainly to make more clients out of it. She also underlines the point that one must never shy away from taking classes or upgrading their skills. It is always good to learn and upgrade skills. She suggests her students find the motivation to drive them, find their niche in the market, and take their time.

She suggests her students be generous and not expect that everything will always be sold out right from the start. They must sensitize their audience to their products, give samples, take reviews and feedback, ask for support, and never involve ego in business. Farida says that we must always be humble and apologize whenever required. We don't have to shout about our brands everywhere, but rather let our work show what we do and what we are made of.

For interested people, Farida Taher offers a one-on-one counseling session and also gives consultations for cafes. One can easily connect with her via Instagram. She mentions that her products are available on a pre-order basis.

Farida shares a thought as a parting message that reads, “Work is not everything, but work can become everything if you learn how to balance your work and your life.” She believes in working with passion and working hard every single day to follow the passion in our lives.