Spinal injury forced producer Ramesh Taurani’s daughter out of Bollywood, into a cafe

‘A Spinal injury changed my life’

Speaking to Finely Chopped TV, Raveena recalled the accident that changed everything. “For me, my spinal injury was the best thing to happen to me. I am so grateful for that injury because it just changed the course of my life. Before pursuing food, I was pursuing acting. I was auditioning as an actor. I tried very hard. I started at 20. In 2015, when I was hardly 22-23, I had this spinal injury. It happened when I was auditioning for this dance film, and we had to do this stunt when I suffered from that spinal injury,” she said. While she didn’t mention the name of the film or actor, it is likely that she was referring to ABCD 2.

She recalled how the injury happened while she was performing a stunt during the audition.

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She was replaced by an established actor

“It was a group full of men, full of testosterone, and they were all excited to do stunts. We did a somersault on the ground, without any mat. I immediately landed on my right hip; I had no protection, nothing. In the josh to do that stunt, I injured my back. And within a week’s time, I was replaced by an established actor,” she said.

Being a producer’s daughter Raveena understands why the makers made that decision.

“When a producer is given a choice between an established actor and somebody who is not, they always choose the established actor because that’s the correct choice for the money they put in the film,” she explained. “I lost the film,” she added.

But losing that film was only one of several disappointments she faced as an aspiring actor. Despite being from a prominent film family, opportunities repeatedly slipped away.

“I could never debut as an actor. I acted in a web series, which never took off. It lost funding after shooting one episode. I was in a music video, it is the only thing that released, Dil Zara Tu Sunn. It was for an independent artist. It was on Zee’s label. My first outing in this space. Many times I was in this process where films were almost in the process but didn’t go through,” she recalled.

Her experience also taught her that being a star kid does not necessarily mean having a successful career in the film industry. “I can fill a room with kids who belong to film families and have not made it. I have been ambitious, done all the work, and yet had to see an opportunity,” she said.

Raveena travelled to Goa for yoga

After losing the film, Raveena decided to focus on recovering from her spinal injury. She turned to yoga and planned a seven-week trip to Goa to heal. “When I lost that film, I had my spine injury… I started doing a lot of yoga to start healing my spine. I just thought I am going to Goa for seven weeks to heal my back through yoga,” she said.

But even before she left, another health setback pushed her towards a lifestyle change that would eventually define her career.

Yoga inspired her to adopt plant-based diet

“Right before I was leaving, I got really sick because I had these stomach infections that were just not going away. I was so sick that I went for a sonography and I was like, I am going to admit myself in the hospital because I felt like I was not getting better at all. The sonography came out clean. Doctors were only prescribing curd and rice. But my health was only getting worse. It was at this time when I read that if you give up dairy products, it can really help your stomach infection and I just decided that I am just going to give up dairy and in just three days I was fine,” she recalled.

Her decision to change her diet gradually introduced her to the world of plant-based food.

Plant-based diet led her to take up a professional course

“When I started doing yoga, I turned to plant-based food. After that yoga course, I returned and there was a course in Bali for vegan chefs. I just said I am just going to go and I am going to teach my staff because when I become an actor, I will have an entourage and they should know what my likings are, so I will go and learn,” she said.

At the time, Raveena was learning culinary skills with the intention of eventually sharing them with her future entourage. Her friends, however, saw a business opportunity that she couldn’t yet see.

After returning from her course, she began making food for friends who were largely into fitness.

“We used to exercise together. Post the exercise in 2015, I used to offer them, like, açai smoothie bowls and mango matcha smoothie bowls, and at that time nobody knew what these words were. They were like, ‘Why are you not selling this?’ I was like, ‘No, I can’t sell food. I can’t imagine charging for food,’” she recalled.

But being unemployed eventually convinced her to give the idea a chance.

What she learnt to teach her entourage became her new identity

“Eventually, I started with two things on the menu, once a week, and it would all get sold out. They had to return my jars. Then it became twice a week. Suddenly, with word of mouth, soon I had 100 customers. I was in business every day. For three months, I did this from my home,” she said.

What started in her kitchen soon began attracting attention.

“Suddenly I got picked up by High Blitz and Vogue. I always wanted to feature in these magazines, but didn’t know as a chef. I started getting a lot of work at yoga retreats. I started my career as a professional chef in a yoga retreat in Goa which catered largely to foreigners. I got opportunities to go to Portugal, England,” she said.

With the new career taking shape, Raveena began dreaming bigger. She wanted to combine her love for food and yoga and build something of her own.

“I want to start a culinary school and yoga studio,” she told herself.

She was eventually set to open her own cafe in 2020. But just as she was ready to turn the dream into reality, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill. The setback, however, did not stop her. Raveena started again and eventually opened Yogisattva Cafe in Bandra in 2021, turning years of uncertainty into a business and a career she had never originally planned.

‘I was ashamed of revealing my surname’

Her journey also forced her to confront her own relationship with her family name. During her acting days, she was sometimes ashamed of admitting that she belonged to the famous Taurani family because she feared that people would assume she was getting opportunities because of her surname.

Looking back, she now sees that insecurity as part of growing up and finding her own identity.

During her struggling years, Raveena also assisted Siddharth Anand on the making of the 2014 film Bang Bang. Yet, despite all her efforts to establish herself in cinema, it was not acting that eventually became her calling. It was food.

Her story is a reminder that sometimes rejection isn’t the end of the road—it is simply a redirection. Raveena entered the film industry hoping to become an actor, spent years auditioning, lost a film after an injury and watched several opportunities disappear. Yet the same injury that seemed to take her dream away ultimately pushed her towards yoga, plant-based food and entrepreneurship.

Today, she has a career, a business and an identity that she built largely on her own terms. What once looked like destiny shutting one door turned out to be destiny opening another.