There is a truth that most food entrepreneurs learn too late. Good food is not enough. It never was. But in today’s digital world — where a single reel can fill a restaurant and a single bad review can empty one — the gap between making great food and running a great food business has never been wider.
Shivani Mehta understood this before most people in Gujarat’s food industry even recognised it as a problem. And that understanding became the foundation of Elexa The Studio — Ahmedabad’s premier 360 degree food production and social media studio — which today serves brands from Gujarat, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and internationally.
In a candid and deeply practical conversation on HJ Show, Shivani shared her complete journey — from winning a state-level cooking competition in 2008 to building a team of 25 to 30 people that handles everything from food styling and production to social media management and paid promotion for some of India’s most recognised food brands.
The Beginning — Rasoi ni Maharani to MasterChef India
Shivani’s entry into the food world was almost accidental. She had a childhood passion for cooking — starting by making food for her younger brother whenever their mother was away. The compliments came. Then the confidence. Then the curiosity about whether this could be something more.
In 2008 she entered Rasoi ni Maharani — a Gujarati cooking competition on ETV Gujarati that attracted 6500 entries from across the state. She registered late, expected nothing and walked away with the title. The live final was held at Thakurbhai Hall in Ahmedabad. She was 20 years old.
The show’s production team reached out after her win and invited her to appear as a cooking expert in their next season. She agreed — and spent nearly a year and a half demonstrating recipes. But she quickly grew restless. Routine had set in. She needed to grow.
Over the next several years she accumulated experience deliberately — working as a line producer for Rasoi Show, then joining the food production team of MasterChef India to understand how food is presented through a camera lens at the highest professional level.
That combination — of knowing how food works in front of a camera — became the seed of Elexa The Studio.
The Gap She Saw — And Why Nobody Was Filling It
When Shivani began thinking about starting her studio in 2019, she noticed something that no one was talking about in Gujarat’s food industry.
Food photographers knew cameras. Agencies knew social media. But nobody — in the food production space — understood the food itself at the level a trained chef does.
This distinction matters enormously. When a food stylist who is not a chef prepares a dish for a shoot, they know how it should look. But they do not always know how it should be cooked so that it looks its best under studio lighting. They do not know the exact moment to pull a dish off the heat so the colour stays vibrant. They do not know which plating technique photographs cleanest.
Shivani did. She also knew how to build a production team, manage a shoot, direct the content and deliver it in a format ready for social media. Combining these two worlds — chef expertise and production knowledge — gave Elexa The Studio an advantage that no pure agency or pure photography studio could replicate.
Why Restaurants Fail — The Honest Answer
In this conversation Shivani does not shy away from the uncomfortable truth that most food entrepreneurs need to hear. Eight out of ten restaurants shut down — not because the food is bad, but because nobody sees it.
The food entrepreneur invests everything into the kitchen. The equipment. The interior. The menu. And then waits for footfall that never comes — because the restaurant has no digital presence, no consistent content strategy and no visibility in the one place where their potential customers are spending most of their time: Instagram.
Shivani explains that a food business in today’s world needs two equally important things. A hero product — the food itself. And a hero strategy — the content and marketing that makes the food visible.
Most food entrepreneurs budget heavily for one and ignore the other completely. The result is a beautifully designed restaurant that nobody knows exists.
The Power of Geo-Targeted Promotion
One of the most practically useful insights in this conversation is the power of hyper-local paid promotion.
Shivani explains that ₹150 to ₹200 of geo-targeted paid promotion — with the right content piece — can reach every mobile phone in a specific locality. If your restaurant or cloud kitchen is in Vastrapur, Ahmedabad — you can ensure that every person within a defined radius sees your reel, your food and your offer.
Compare this to a newspaper advertisement — ₹18,000 to ₹20,000 for a small placement that reaches a broad, largely untargeted readership. Or a hoarding — ₹1.5 to ₹2 lakh for a static visual that most people drive past without registering.
The digital alternative is not just cheaper. It is measurable, targeted and infinitely more efficient. And yet most food entrepreneurs either do not know this or do not budget for it.
The Elexa Process — Simpler Than You Think
One of the most reassuring parts of this conversation for any food brand owner is how Shivani describes the Elexa process.
You courier your product to their studio. Their team tests it, understands it and builds a content planner — including how many reels, statics and videos will be produced that month, what the concept for each piece will be and what the goal of each campaign is.
You review and approve the planner. Then their team shoots, edits, writes captions, manages posting schedules and runs paid promotion — all within a single monthly retainer.
At the end of every month you receive a report showing exactly how many people each piece of content reached, what the engagement looked like and what results the campaigns generated.
Your job is to make the food. Their job is to make sure the world sees it.
Why Big Brands Never Stop Posting
Shivani makes a point that reframes the entire social media conversation for small food business owners.
Coca Cola does not need social media to survive. Neither does Dominos. Yet both of them post every single day without exception. Why?
Because staying top of mind is a continuous effort — not a one-time campaign. The brands that people think of first when they are hungry are the brands that show up consistently. And consistency in social media requires a plan, a team and a budget — not a phone and a free app.
Whether you are a cloud kitchen with ₹15,000 to spare or an established restaurant brand ready for a full monthly plan — Elexa The Studio builds a content strategy that grows with your business.
The Final Lesson
Shivani’s story is not just about food. It is about what happens when you combine genuine expertise with the discipline to keep learning and the courage to build something from scratch in a market that did not fully believe it was possible.
She broke the perception that quality production could only come from Mumbai. She built a team. She proved the work. And today she serves clients internationally from a studio in Ahmedabad.
Her message to every food entrepreneur is both simple and urgent. Make great food. But make sure the world can see it.
Listen to the full conversation with Shivani Mehta on The HJ Show
