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ARTICLE AD BOX
A former product manager in New York has turned career setbacks into success, earning around ₹1.3 crore a month by selling Bihari-style tacos and Pakistani-American street food.
According to CNBC, 34-year-old Pakistani-American Zeeshan Bakhrani was laid off twice from product management roles before choosing to follow his passion for food. In August 2025, he launched his venture, Nishaan, in Manhattan, investing $70,000 (about ₹65 lakh) from his own savings.
From side hustle to full-time venture
Bakhrani spent nearly a decade working in tech while running pop-up food stalls on weekends. After losing his job, he decided to focus fully on building his food business.
His menu features a mix of flavours and ideas, including Pakistani chopped cheese, Bihari barbacoa tacos, and buffalo tandoori chicken sandwiches. These dishes are inspired by the food he grew up with in Chicago, where his mother often added South Asian spices to everyday American meals.
Strong growth in earnings
The business quickly gained traction. Monthly revenue rose from $57,000 (about ₹53 lakh) to as much as $140,000 (around ₹1.3 crore).
Bakhrani describes Nishaan as “Pakistani-American street food”, combining familiar American formats with spices such as cumin, coriander and chilli powder. “I’m Pakistani, I’m American. I’m going to embrace parts of both," he said.
Blending cultures through food
He recalled experimenting at home in Chicago, trying creative twists like using parathas instead of tortillas in quesadillas and adding chutney-based sauces to burgers. These ideas later shaped his menu and helped him build a loyal following on social media.
More control, more creativity
Comparing his current work to his previous roles in tech, Bakhrani said the difference is clear. While his earlier jobs involved long meetings and changing priorities, he now enjoys full creative control.
“Here, I come up with an idea, I can knock it out in a week,” he said.
Although he now works up to 14 hours a day, he says the freedom and sense of ownership make it worthwhile.
In a similar incident, Saket Saurabh, the co-founder and CEO of The Momos Mafia, left his lucrative job to start a momo business that now generates ₹5 crore in revenue.
After graduating from NIFT Delhi in 2014, Saket co-founded Wowflux, which was later acquired by FlixStock. He then worked at FlixStock as a product manager, earning around ₹52 lakh a year.
Alongside his corporate job, Saket also explored the food business by helping his sister and brother-in-law run Bamboo Cafe in Gurgaon. While the café offered dishes such as parathas and biryani, it was the momos that soon became the most popular among customers.
“It was a generic cafe. We were selling everything. As an experiment, we opened a small canopy selling only momos right outside the cafe. After that small canopy, we put up a cart at a location called Infotech in Gurgaon. That cart did great business. We were doing ₹10,000 to ₹12,000 in sales every day. We met many office workers at that stall who wanted to open their own momo carts. That’s how the franchising business started."
“In the first year, we opened several carts. This was the good side, but the cart business was also volatile. We ran into various problems. Some days, the authorities would remove carts; we ran into staffing problems, and sometimes the weather did not cooperate. Operationally, there were many challenges," the entrepreneur had told Hindustan Times
English (US) ·