Our story

DIA makes masalas and spice powders to the household recipes of the Badaga community of the Nilgiris.

A Badaga kitchen in Kethi

DIA is run by Mrs. Saraswati Karthikeyan, a member of the Badaga community of the Nilgiris. The recipes are her family’s own. For about two years she made and sold them around the hills under the name 6 Faces, building a range of 13 masala and spice-powder variants and selling to households and institutions around the hills. Today the same recipes go out under a new name: DIA.

Hatti Masoodi, our signature blend

Hatti Masoodi is the blend Badaga households have made for generations. It is the heart of the DIA range, alongside curry, sambar, rasam, chicken and mutton masalas, and pure chilli, turmeric and coriander powders. [ONE OR TWO LINES FROM THE FAMILY ON HOW HATTI MASOODI TASTES AND WHAT IT GOES INTO.]

How every pouch is made

DIA is setting up a small, hygienic manufacturing unit near Kethi, on the Ooty–Coonoor road, so every pouch goes through the same six steps:

  1. Inspected and cleaned. Each lot of raw spice is checked for moisture, foreign matter, mould and colour, then cleaned of stones and dust.
  2. Dried in a hot-air tray dryer until moisture is below 10%.
  3. Roasted in a drum roaster, as each recipe specifies.
  4. Ground and sieved for an even powder.
  5. Blended: weighed ingredients mixed exactly to the recipe.
  6. Sealed and batch-coded with batch number, date of manufacture, best-before date and MRP.

Every batch is recorded with its raw-material lots, recipe, moisture reading and date, so any pouch can be traced back to how it was made.

Made by women of the Nilgiris

DIA is a women-led enterprise, and our unit near Kethi will employ women from the surrounding villages.

Trusted beyond the kitchen

Besides homes and local shops, our masalas have been supplied to institutions, including a 2025 order for the Indian Army through the Government e-Marketplace (GeM).

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