Aditi Handa Story: How The Baker’s Dozen Made Sourdough Bread Accessible Across India

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Aditi Handa is the no-nonsense, sourdough-obsessed co-founder of The Baker’s Dozen who decided that India’s daily bread deserved better than the chemical-laden, 20-ingredient monstrosities dominating supermarket shelves. 

Trained at serious places — Diploma in International Bread Baking from the International Culinary Institute in New York and Patisserie from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris — Aditi could have easily stayed in the “gourmet” lane and charged premium prices to people who post their avocado toast on Instagram. Instead, she and her husband Sneh Jain started The Baker’s Dozen in 2013 in Prabhadevi, Mumbai with a radical (for India at the time) idea: make real sourdough bread an everyday essential, not a special-occasion flex.

She’s the woman who dragged artisanal sourdough out of fancy restaurants and elite home-baker WhatsApp groups and shoved it into kirana stores and common households at prices starting around ₹40.

She started small, educating skeptical “aunties” by literally handing out free loaves to convert them. From 1,000 loaves in the first year to scaling massively (the brand now operates across dozens of cities, multiple channels, and has become one of India’s largest artisan bakeries). When rents in Mumbai got ridiculous, they moved production to Ahmedabad in 2019 and kept doubling down on quality and accessibility. 

Recent wins include the Zero Maida Donut Cake and pushing 100% whole wheat sourdough loaves that actually last thanks to the natural magic of fermentation.

Many Indian artisanal brands feature the founder’s name prominently on the front of their packaging.

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