The Man who brought Chennai flavours to Australia – Shekar Mani

By Raj Natarajan

One of the major ingredients of successful multicultural societies around the World is people’s love for food from different countries. Australia’s success story as a multicultural society includes the food factor and Aussies love Indian food. If you walk into any Indian restaurant in Sydney or Melbourne you will see the customers from all races and all ethnicities which goes to prove that food is a great unifying factor.

When I immigrated to Australia in 1988, I had to go in search of an Indian Restaurant but today every suburb in Sydney and Melbourne has an Indian Restaurant and Indian food has become very popular amongst the locals. Until the last few years Indian food meant North Indian Tandoori dishes and most of the Indian Restaurants specialised in Punjabi and Tandoori food with the result Indian food was synonymous with Punjabi roti, nan, parotha, subji and curry.

However for a vegetarian like me in search of an Indian Restaurant which serves South Indian vegetarian food, there was not any Indian Restaurant which specialised in purely vegetarian food. In 1990s a few Indian Restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne started serving idli, dosa and vada, the typical South Indian cuisine but they also served non-vegetarian dishes as well. Therefore for someone in search of purely vegetarian restaurant specialising in South Indian food, the wait was long.

Master Chef Australia 2018 winner Sashi Cheliah served many South Indian dishes to the judges who seemed to like them a lot which resulted in Sashi being crowned the winner at the end of the competition. Therefore local Aussies, these days, are not surprised when they see dosa, idli and vada on the menu card in an Indian Restaurant.

My call for a pure vegetarian restaurant in Sydney specialising in South Indian food was finally answered by the man who brought all the Chennai flavours to Australia, Shekar Mani, through a chain of purely vegetarian restaurants called “Saravanaa Bhavan”. The name is very familiar to us because Saravanaa Bhavan, which originated in Chennai in India, has branches in all major cities around the World.

Shekhar very enthusiastically says he wanted to introduce tasty and healthy vegetarian South Indian food to the wider Australian community. The first Saravanaa Bhavan flagship restaurant of Australia was opened at Parramatta in November 2014. Then Shekar’s attention turned to Victoria and opened the first branch of Saravanaa Bhavan of Victoria at Wantirna followed by two more branches, one at King Street in Melbourne CBD and another at Werribee later on. Then it was time to look at our neighbour across the Tasman Sea and Auckland got its Sharavanaa Bhavan on Hobson Street. Sydney was back on the radar for Shekar and recently Sydney’s second and third branches of Saravanaa Bhavan were opened at North Sydney and The Ponds, Western Sydney.

Where to from here? Well Shekar says he has plans for other cities of Australia like Brisbane and Adelaide and also Queenstown in New Zealand and Fiji next year subject to availability of resources. Shekar adds that the resources he has brought from India are very special and they are not locally available because South Indian vegetarian cuisine has evolved over generations and locally available resources may not be able to achieve the perfection he is looking for.

Shekar, started with Taj Group in India and working for Tata Administrative Services was involved in launching new Taj brands. Shekar came to Australia to work for ANZ bank in Melbourne as an expatriate but financial crisis took its toll and hence he joined the Pepsi Group before being head hunted to take on the responsibility to launch Coca Cola for South Asia Region from Mumbai. Shekar, came back to Australia and joined a company called Schneider in 2002 as a director of their energy management division.

Shekar says he was introduced to restaurant business accidentally during one of his visits to Chennai when he met his old friend from Taj Group, a person called Mahadevan. Shekar says it was Mahadevan who convinced the original founder of Sharavanaa Bhavan, Shiva Kumar to seek Shekar’s help to start the branches in Australia and thus began Shekar’s new venture in Australia.

Shekhar says that he owes his success to his partner Vinod Kumar, a chartered accountant and the managers who manage each one of the branches and the dedicated kitchen staff. Shekar has a special mention for the Manager of Paramatta Branch, Ramaswamy Hariharan. Shekar gives a lot of credit to what his Partner Vinod has done to the success of this business. Shekar adds that Vinod is the kind of person who does not seek any lime light and wants to be in the background giving him total support in this venture.

So where does this passion for food come from in a man who has master’s degree in economics and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata and worked in various other fields totally unconnected with food Industry. Shekar smiles and says that it may be his up-bringing, specially his mother’s influence who is very good cook herself and also Shekar says he follows his instincts rather than the beaten path and these factors might have taken him towards this venture.

What is Shekar’s future plan? Well he is taking a breather right now, he says and his hands are full managing the seven restaurants in Australia and New Zealand. However I get the feeling that Shekar is not the kind of guy who wants to put his feet up and enjoy the fruits of his labour and it is only a matter of time, I am sure, Shekar will be embarking on his next venture very soon.