How Khadija Jiwani is leading the next phase of Aliya’s Fine Foods
Khadija Jiwani was 13 years old when her parents, Noorudin and Anis, moved the family (including younger sister Aliya, who was 11 at the time) from Toronto to Edmonton in 1999 with the ambition of starting a food company. (Anis was a registered dietitian with a background in recipe development and had worked in food manufacturing.) Her parents saw the lack of South Asian food on the market and hoped to fill a gap.
They started Aliya’s Fine Foods—which quickly became a successful frozen foods company—merging Indian classics such as samosas and biryani with East African influences. (Khadija’s grandparents are from the Gujarat state of India and her parents were born in Kenya and Uganda.) Khadija remembers working in the family operation as a teenager. “Growing up, every summer job was at the plant, whether it was gluing boxes before we had automation, cutting onions or packing samosas in the chilled rooms at the end of the line,” she says.
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Khadija wasn’t always set on joining the family business, however. “I lived it for so much,” she says. “I felt like I needed to blaze my own trail.” She studied civil engineering at the University of Alberta and later earned an MBA with the hope of working in international development, where she could make a difference. But, after a few roles in construction and as a consultant and advisor for NGOs in South Africa and Zambia, she found herself pulled back to Aliya’s. “I realized I could have just as much impact working with my parents,” Khadija explains.
Noorudin and Anis prided themselves on giving jobs to newcomers who otherwise struggled to find employment without Canadian work experience, reflecting their own journey to Canada as immigrants. “My dad would say, ‘I will be your Canadian experience,’” Khadija says of the newcomers they hired. “We have people who started working with us 25 years ago and you get to see people grow.”
In 2015, Khadija joined the company full time, coinciding with her parents stepping back as they approached retirement. Her first order of business was redeveloping the company’s in-house brand, Chef Bombay. The company found early success producing private-label products for major grocers and prioritized that business, resulting in Chef Bombay being limited to shelves in just 100 stores.
“The quality was there,” Khadija says. “It was just about communicating that to people. We had the brand, Chef Bombay. So, I told my dad, ‘Let’s do something with it.’” Noorudin was skeptical but gave Khadija a modest $5,000 budget, which she used to design Scandinavian-inspired packaging—images on white boxes—to make their core lineup of products (butter chicken, chicken tikka masala, beef vindaloo, veggie pakoras, chicken tikka samosas and mini veggie samosas) stand out in the freezer aisle. “Nothing looked like this on the shelves,” she explains.
Chef Bombay soon began getting stocked in small, independent grocery stores in British Columbia. This caught the interest of the main frozen foods buyer at Loblaws, who brought the products into stores in 2016. Then, in 2018, Chef Bombay products debuted in the Sobeys Local Program.
Two years later, Chef Bombay’s products had landed on about 2,200 shelves. Another rebrand followed in 2020, resulting in the bright, colourful boxes that Chef Bombay is known for today. That led to more major grocers coming on board. Chef Bombay increased its presence in Sobeys with national distribution in 2024 and began selling at Save-On-Foods at the end of last year. Chef Bombay products are now available on nearly 7,000 grocery store shelves across Canada and the United States.
Khadija doesn’t have an official job title at the company, but says her role exists somewhere between marketing, strategy and operations. And she isn’t the only member of her generation to join the business. Her cousin, Hafiz, is vice-president of sales and her sister Aliya manages employee training and development.
Anis and Noorudin are still a big part of the company, despite taking a step back. “No recipe gets made or released without my mom’s input,” Khadija explains. Since its most recent rebrand, Chef Bombay has released a few fusion products, including butter chicken naanpanadas and butter chicken mac and cheese, which launched last fall. Butter chicken burritos and biryani wraps are launching this year.
Khadija is also overseeing the expansion of their production space, adding 150,000 square feet to the 90,000-sq.-ft. facility to accommodate a Mexican-American frozen food company they purchased in 2023. “Mexican cuisine is very similar to Indian in the way the sauces are cooked,” she says. “We had the expertise in frozen food, so it was a really good opportunity to expand our culinary side and our capacities.” They plan to launch their Mexican brand later this year.
This article was first published in Canadian Grocer’s March/April 2026 issue.
