If I told you that a guy with zero background in the F&B industry is running one of the tastiest and most innovative Indian restaurants in the city, would you believe me? Well that’s just what Pranaay, owner of Little India, is doing. Opened last year on Phạm Viết Chánh, the place has garnered significant praise from residents of Saigon, not to mention articles in a number of local publications. So how, then, did he do it? I’d known about Little India ever since it opened, owing to whispers I’d been hearing about a fusion of Mexico and India that culminated in a marvel known as the Chicken Tikka Taco. Having said that, it wasn’t until a few months ago that I actually got around to meeting the man behind it all.
One afternoon, at an hour when Phạm Viết Chánh was quiet in a way it rarely is, locals sitting out and enjoying a moment of leisure before the hordes of beer and cocktail-hungry expats descended upon the neighbourhood, I headed to Little India. Greeting me with a warm smile, Pranaay was immediately hospitable. He offered me a glass of their homemade mango lassi—a natural yellow colour given that they don’t use food colouring like many Indian restaurants—before offering me a seat. I already felt at ease. The interior was painted in deep blues and yellows, and with a fan humming on the ceiling and pleasant sitar music playing on the speakers, I felt, in a strange way, as if I were at a spa. It was with this feeling that for the next hour or so, I heard Pranaay tell his story.
Pranaay was born and raised in Delhi. He spent the first two decades of his life there and to hear him tell it, cooking never played that much of a pivotal role in his upbringing. Of course he loved the cuisine of his country but at the time food was never something he pursued with the intention of making a living in. Instead, he graduated high school and enrolled in the ESSEC Business School’s Singapore branch to study International Business. He relocated to their Paris campus after four months. Upon graduating he returned to Singapore for work as a Sales Enablement and Bid Manager before moving to Vietnam a year before Covid. It was funny, how when listening to Praanay talk, he had a way of organising the past few decades of his life in an altogether succinct and clear manner. One thing happened, then the next, and now he was in Vietnam. It made my job as an interviewer that much easier while also speaking to the sort of vision and clarity with which he lives his life.
Upon relocating to Vietnam, Pranaay started working at a French pharmaceutical and tech consulting company. Tasked with setting up and leading the marketing team, he did his job but it wasn’t long before he felt he’d reached the ceiling—There was no more room for him to grow. Adding onto that AI, which was gaining more traction and use, he realised that he needed to do something else. This would’ve been a worrying realisation were it not for the fact that for the whole period while he was working in Vietnam, an idea had been bubbling inside of his head: selling Indian food. But let’s back up.
To anyone who’s ever wanted a taste of India in Saigon, I’m sure you were pleased to find out that there’s more than plenty of Indian fare on offer. In fact, Saigon is absolutely inundated with options of places to get your fill of curries, tikkas, and biryanis, so much so that if you were like me when first discovering this, you would’ve been a little lost as to where to go and what to get. Given this reality, whenever Pranaay thought about Indian food in this already flooded market, he had his doubts about a full-blown restaurant. What he needed was something different, something that would kick down the door and get people talking. Enter the Chicken Tikka Taco. Unbeknownst to most people, initially, Little India was supposed to be a street food stall built around this one dish. This meant that beyond fusing Mexico and India, Pranaay was also mixing in Vietnam with the addition of everyone’s favourite way to eat in the city: the humble roadside stall. At that point, everything seemed to be figured out. Of course, no story is ever so simple.
It was Pranaay’s current partners, Natty and Lois, whom he met at a picnic organised by a mutual friend, that proposed going beyond a single dish at a single street stall and starting an actual Indian restaurant. However, they didn’t want to merely help him with his operation, they had a bigger goal in mind. So came about the birth of the Little series. Little India is the first in a three-part mission to bring Indian, Caribbean, and French cuisine to Saigon, all the while remaining rooted in their ethos of being small enough to consistently provide guests with fresh, delicious food and never too big that they lose their connection with their customers. With this in mind, they returned to the problem of the fact that Saigon is a city inundated with Indian restaurants. How would they make Little India unique?
Pranaay outlined three major points. First was the fact that anytime he entered an Indian restaurant in the city, they never felt especially warm or inviting. You were coming for a meal. Then you’d leave. He didn’t feel much sense of a welcome or festivity about the location and its service, which resulted in meals where the food could be delicious but the experience lackluster. This tied into the fact that he noticed a lot of restaurants here don’t celebrate Indian holidays such as Holi and Diwali, which, once again, he believes takes away from the overall experience. Take Diwali, for example. At Little India, they celebrate by decorating the restaurant with lights and candles and offering a special set menu. These efforts ensure Little India gives visitors more than just the promise of good food.
On the topic of food, Pranaay also noticed how most Indian restaurants tended to serve the same ol’ Butter Chicken or Chicken Tikka Masala. Of course there’s nothing wrong with these dishes in and of themselves—If people like eating them, so be it. Having said that, India is the world’s most populous country. In line with that, there’s a whole plethora of foods and ingredients that for the most part, go without being tasted outside of India. For natives like Pranaay, this is a shame. This is why when it came time to hire a chef, he was adamant on hiring someone from the country and giving them a good amount of control over the menu. Currently, their chef is from northern India. This means a lot of creamy, spicy dishes like Tandoori and Mughlai dishes. Beyond that, it’s impossible not to understate Pranaay’s influence over the kitchen. While the bulk of his cooking experience was at barbecues with friends, he has a keen interest in food and possesses a childlike playfulness at finding combinations between ingredients that otherwise sound like they wouldn’t go well together. Once again, the Chicken Tikka Taco. Besides that, the Chicken Tikka Blue Cheese, which he developed after a bite of Brick & Barrel’s Blue Cheese Burger, prompting him to ask the question: why can’t we do this with a curry? Pranaay’s taste buds allow Little India to diverge from what might be considered more traditional Indian cuisine, but the innovation doesn't end there. Capturing the modern Indian market and the global Indian diaspora also means tapping into the thousands of Indians who’ve made a home outside of their native land. This is why Pranaay has collaborated with South African’s Stephan and Etienne of Rafters to create the Bunny Chow, an Indian-South African dish consisting of hollowed-out bread filled with curry. Such efforts at going beyond what most people might recognise of Indian food has allowed Pranaay and Little India to stay at the forefront of flavour and creativity.
Finally, the issue of location. Given the multitude of Indian restaurants in Saigon, separating themselves based on hospitality and food would be a good start, but Pranaay and his partners wanted to go further. Initially, they had three areas in mind: Thạnh Mỹ Lợi, Đa Kao, and Phạm Viết Chánh. To aid in deciding which was best, Pranaay had a huge map at home pinpointing the density of Indian restaurants in the city. It didn’t take long before they realised Thạnh Mỹ Lợi was way too far out and Đa Kao already had several Indian restaurants in the area, making competition fiercer. The arrows pointed to Phạm Viết Chánh. Already a hub for expats but missing an Indian restaurant that could serve locals as well as residents of places like City Garden, Landmark 81, and the Saigon Pearl apartments, PVC was an obvious choice. With these three key points hashed out, Little India opened at the start of 2024.
Since then, it’s been a process of non-stop learning—Of course, with a few bumps along the way. For starters, his first chef jumped ship which meant Pranaay had to spend the first month cooking as damage control, an experience, he described with a laugh, as intense. Besides that, legal and accounting laws can be difficult to wrap your head around, which means a lot of back and forth figuring out what means what. Finally, there’s the fact that staff turnover in F&B is rapid, though Pranaay was proud to point out that his employees—the current chef and a group of young Vietnamese university students—have stuck with him for over a year. All of this is to say that things are looking up. Him and his partners have plans to open a Little India in District 1 next year, a space that’s a little larger but somewhere they feel they can still stay true to their ethos. Beyond that, as was their deal, Little Caribbean and Little Paris are also in the works. First will come Little Caribbean, which will be a space where guests can come for dishes like jerk chicken, drinks like rum punches, and a dance floor for salsa and bachata classes—As he put it, it’ll have more of a fun-loving, party atmosphere, as the Caribbean does. Little Paris will follow, but that won’t be for a few years. No matter what, Pranaay’s got an idea, a clear vision, and he’s happy to keep things simple. To keep them little. After all, it’s thanks to this philosophy that a guy with zero background in the F&B industry has come to run one of the tastiest and most innovative Indian restaurants in Saigon.
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