Q&A chat with Lyn

How important is your Indian heritage to starting up Gold42?

It is very important in that my family in India has been making ghee for many generations. The expertise they acquired has now been handed to me through my mother who used to make ghee frequently, the same way it has been made for thousands of years.

What plans do you have for Gold42 over the next five years?

We are presently a small, nimble and energetic producer, new to the market and with exciting things ahead of us. We are determined and have set ourselves the goal of becoming a premier ghee brand. To achieve this will require much hard work and commitment for which we are well prepared. Ghee is so adaptable and opens up so many opportunities for new products. Our kitchen is experimenting with using our ghee as a core ingredient in confectionery and other products.

Do you intend to look at export opportunities?

It would be wonderful to secure a relationship with an overseas distributor but our priority focus is first Tasmania, then mainland Australia until we are confident we have production capacity to handle larger and more frequent orders. Keeping our existing customers happy is very important to us.

Both you and Selina are capable chefs – how did this help with launching your business?

We both love cooking and our home kitchen is the central focus of our family life. We both believe strongly that food and health are inseparable. It goes withour saying that our home kitchen is organic wherever possible, gluten-free and sugar-free with a strong emphasis on paleo, keto and vegetarian diets. It is a place where we experiment and where our ideas for ghee and new flavours are created.

You are prominent in southern Tasmanian business circles – with a diverse background in marketing, property, finance and accounting – how has this experience helped get your business moving?

Being successful in business tends to require multiple competencies. The brand & marketing experience my husband and I have acquired in previous endeavours puts us in a good place to build a strong brand presence and deliver messages that will resonate with our target customers, be it at markets, in retail shops or online. Finance is probably the most scary subject for any new business owner – having sufficient start-up funds, cashflow projections, dealing with banks, loan applications... and then having sufficient money left in your account at the end of the month to pay yourself! I am fortunate that underpinning our business is over 25 years of finance and accounting experience.

What advice would you give to new start-up food businesses here in Tasmania?

Go for it... we live in one of the most beautiful and fertile places on the planet, with the freshest and tastiest produce, surrounded by many wonderful entrepreneurial people running diverse and exciting businesses. It is infectious. Go out and talk with as many as you can. Be adventurous, be innovative, be confident and be persistent.