Poonam Kaur Bindra, Founder & CEO of SAACOOR, was born in Nashik, Maharashtra, and later married in Aurangabad. From a small-town girl with big dreams, she grew into a celebrated chef, entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, author, educator and content creator — with little initial exposure to the culinary world, her early years were shaped by curiosity and determination.
A question that became a brand
What began as a simple question — how can food be healthier without compromising on taste? — became the seed of a purpose-driven brand. Poonam holds a B.Com degree in commerce; before marriage, cooking was never central to her life, but marriage and family responsibilities brought her into the kitchen and opened a new chapter. Determined to refine her skills, she pursued culinary learning through professional courses and continuous self-development, broadening her knowledge of food, wellness and nutrition.
If it's good enough for my family, it's good enough for my customers.
Building a community, then a brand
Through food content, recipes, photography and practical online sharing, she built a growing community of learners and food lovers, eventually founding Art of Cooking in 2019. Today, SAACOOR reflects her belief that food should nourish the body, respect ingredients, and be made with honesty and care — every product crafted with clean ingredients, authentic flavors and a deep commitment to better living.
Education and empowerment
Bindra's impact extends well beyond SAACOOR. Through her educational work, she has empowered more than 50,000 students, building a following that values both her culinary expertise and her perspective on nutrition, wellness and mindful consumption. As a TEDx speaker, she has shared her philosophy with wider audiences — connecting what we eat, how we think about food and the choices we make every day. Her approach is practical rather than prescriptive, focused on helping people understand their ingredients and build habits that are sustainable over the long term.
Her journey has also been strengthened by the constant support of her family. Poonam credits her husband as her biggest backbone — someone who has consistently encouraged her, supported her ambitions and stood beside her through every stage of her entrepreneurial journey, a support she believes has played an important role in helping her grow into the entrepreneur she is today.
The clean-label shift in Indian home cooking brands
Food brands built around clean-ingredient, preservative-free positioning have multiplied rapidly in India's D2C space over the past several years, as consumers who once compared only price and taste have started reading ingredient labels with the same scrutiny long applied to imported packaged food. That shift has particularly benefited founders with a home-cooking or family-first origin story, since it gives a brand a credible answer to the question every clean-label competitor eventually faces: why should a customer trust this formulation over a dozen similarly positioned alternatives? Poonam's framing — that a product should be good enough for her own family before it reaches a customer — is a common answer among founders in this category, but one that tends to land more convincingly when, as in her case, it is paired with a visible personal cooking and teaching journey rather than asserted as pure marketing copy.
The pairing of a food brand with large-scale culinary education, as Poonam has built through Art of Cooking and her TEDx platform, also reflects a broader pattern among Indian food entrepreneurs: education-first audience building (recipes, technique videos, nutrition content) tends to convert into product trust more durably than advertising alone, since customers arrive at the eventual purchase already familiar with the founder's judgement and standards.
Sources and editorial references
This profile combines an earlier self-submitted account with Poonam Kaur Bindra's featured profile in the September 2026 print edition of Global Cover Story. Career details and figures reflect the subject's own account and have not been independently verified.