Impact Maker of the Year 2026: Reflections on Four Years of The Vegan School

This week, the Vegan India Conference named The Vegan School Impact Maker of the Year 2026. We join Matthew Glover, founder of Veganuary, who received the same recognition last year. The lineage feels significant — and the news is still settling in.

What follows is a longer note. For our alumni, our team, and our visiting faculty. For anyone who has been part of the school in any way over the past four years.

How This Started

In 2021, Nisha — a passionate home cook and a longtime vegan — wanted to study plant-based cooking professionally. We looked for a structured vegan culinary course in India. There wasn't one. A few short workshops here and there, but nothing full-time, nothing rigorous, nothing built around plant-based food from the ground up.

So Nisha went abroad. She enrolled at Vegchef Academy in Sweden, completed her diploma in plant-based cooking, and went on to work at Vaxthuset, a vegan fine dining restaurant in Stockholm.

Meanwhile back home, I kept thinking — there must be others like her. People who want to learn vegan cooking seriously but can't find a proper course in India. Not everyone has the means or the opportunity to fly to Europe for it.

That thought became a plan. And the plan became The Vegan School.

We built the website in January 2022, announced the first batch for September, and on the 5th of September 2022, we welcomed our first students in Goa. The school has been running ever since — batch after batch, growing steadily through word of mouth, honest teaching, and food that speaks for itself.

What Four Years Have Built

The numbers tell part of the story. Over 200 students. More than 30 countries. Six continents. Fourteen students per batch, kept deliberately small so every student gets the attention the work requires.

The alumni have gone on to do real, meaningful things. Some have opened cafés and bakeries — Prajuri River Acres, Luna Artisan Bakery, Cafe Maple in Pune, Sera Eats, Seasoned by JP. Others run cloud kitchens, host pop-up dinners, develop recipes for brands, and lead wellness retreats. Several work as personal chefs — including for Virat Kohli and his family. Not every graduate took the professional route, and that has always been equally valid. Many came to The Vegan School for personal growth, better health, or a deeper love of food. They cook for their families now, host dinner parties, and share what they learned in their own communities.

What connects all of them is this: they left The Vegan School cooking with confidence, creativity, and purpose.

Beyond alumni outcomes, four years have also built things harder to put on a brochure. A faculty of specialists who teach with passion and precision. A campus in Porvorim that has hosted students from over thirty countries. A small archive of writing on plant-based cooking — fermentation, knife skills, regional Indian cuisines, the science of Indian tadka, the cultural roots of veganism in India. A reputation for honest teaching that brings students to us through word-of-mouth more than any marketing we've done.

What the Award Belongs To

The recognition is for The Vegan School, but the work is shared.

To Our Alumni

Over 200 of you, from more than 30 countries. You are the only reason this school is still standing. You trusted us with the start of your culinary journey. You showed up every day. You stayed up late finishing your final menus. You sent photos from your kitchens after you went home. You opened cafés and bakeries, launched catering businesses, became private chefs, and went on to teach others to cook the way you learned to.

This award belongs to all of you, more than to anyone else.

To Our Visiting Faculty

To Satish, who teaches mushrooms with depth no textbook can match — varieties, techniques, flavour possibilities — alongside running his own Tamil-style vegan restaurant in South Goa.

To Ahvanya, our sushi and Japanese cuisine specialist, who studied the craft in Japan and brings the same precision to every batch.

To Buland, our fermentation and sourdough specialist, whose deep understanding of cultures and starters has shaped how our students think about microbes for the rest of their cooking lives.

To Aishwarya, who teaches food photography — composition, light, storytelling — and has helped students build real Instagram portfolios that landed them their first paid work.

To Mohsin, who walks students through coffee bean-to-cup like it's the most important thing in the world, because for that week, it is.

You bring depth we could not bring alone. Thank you.

To Our Team

To our assistant chefs over the years — Divyani, Sanjana, Harshi — thank you for everything you have carried alongside us. To our support staff, Nitish and Sunny — without you, the school would not function for a single day. The classes happen because you make them happen. Every meal cooked, every kitchen turned around, every student looked after — that is you, every day.

To Nisha

And to Nisha.

There is no way to write this section without sounding insufficient. She has been there from day one — through every challenge, every uncertainty, every long day, every small victory. The Vegan School would not exist without her belief, her commitment, and her countless hours of work. She is the chef who designs every module, who trains every batch personally, who insists that students understand the why behind every technique.

I just get to talk about it. She does the work.

To the Vegan India Conference

Thank you for seeing it. For looking at four years of small daily work and choosing to recognise it. It means a lot.

Some Thoughts on Plant-Based Food in India

Indian food culture has been quietly plant-forward for millennia. Most of what gets covered as "vegan" globally has direct precedents in regional Indian cuisines — fermented soybean from Nagaland, banana-flower preparations from Bengal, lentil-millet preparations from across the Himalayas, coconut-based coastal cuisines from the South. The framing of veganism as a Western movement that arrived in India misses what was already here.

The contribution we hope The Vegan School makes is in formalising the training. Indian home cooks have been making plant-based food for generations; the missing piece was structured education that treated it as a discipline rather than a substitution. Eight weeks of full-time work in a kitchen, with people who care whether students understand the technique. That is what we set out to build.

Four years in, we still feel like we are at the beginning of that.

What's Next

Continuing the work. The eight-week residential programme runs through the year. The online course continues to grow. Shorter intensive programmes — most recently a 3-week gluten-free vegan cooking course — extend what the school can offer. We will keep writing — the four-part regional series will get sequels into specific deep-dives; the technique posts will keep building; the school's voice on plant-based culinary education will get more distinct over time.

There are conversations underway about formats we haven't tried yet — shorter residentials for working professionals, longer programmes for chefs wanting depth in a single discipline, collaborations with restaurants and food businesses. Some of these may happen. Some may not. We will see.

The core stays the same: eight weeks, fourteen students per batch, hands-on every day, taught by Chef Nisha and a small team of specialists who genuinely care whether students walk out as the cooks they wanted to be.

A Quiet Close

Awards are strange. They arrive in the middle of ordinary days when the kitchen is still running and the next batch is still being planned and there are still bills to pay and equipment to maintain and curriculum to refine. The recognition is real. The work is also real, and it continues exactly the same way the next morning.

To everyone who has been part of the past four years — students, alumni, team, faculty, friends of the school, the people who pointed others toward us — thank you. The award has our name on it. The work has all of yours in it.

— Ashish, on behalf of Nisha and the team

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Vegan India Conference?

The Vegan India Conference is an annual gathering of plant-based businesses, advocates, chefs, educators, and policy figures in India. The conference recognises significant contributors to India's plant-based ecosystem through awards including Impact Maker of the Year. Past recipients include Matthew Glover, co-founder of Veganuary, who received the same recognition in 2025.

What is Impact Maker of the Year?

Impact Maker of the Year is the annual recognition given by the Vegan India Conference to an individual or organisation that has meaningfully advanced plant-based food and education in India. The 2025 recipient was Matthew Glover, founder of Veganuary. The 2026 recipient is The Vegan School.

When did The Vegan School start?

The Vegan School was founded by Ashish Santhalia and Chef Nisha Garg. The website was built in January 2022 and the first batch began on September 5, 2022. It is India's first dedicated plant-based culinary school, offering an 8-week residential programme in Porvorim, Goa.

How many students has The Vegan School trained?

Over 200 students from more than 30 countries across six continents have completed The Vegan School's residential programme since it opened in 2022. Alumni have gone on to open cafés, bakeries, catering businesses, become private chefs, and teach plant-based cooking themselves.