Bharat Entrepreneurs

” When I thought of starting a company, I felt India needed 100 people like Narayana Murthy and Ambani. If 100 such people support 2 lakh people each, imagine how many Indians get supported. Entrepreneurship is needed to uplift the poor. It is not easy to be an entrepreneur, especially a first generation entrepreneur. There will be lots of challenges in the beginning but you should learn to look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Never give up even if there are hurdles. There are many who give up within a week. You need determination and a tough mind to cross the initial hurdles.” E.Sarathbabu

E. SarathBabu is not the typical IIM Ahmedabad student you read about in the newspapers. He did not take the easy path to earn mega bucks in spite of being offered plum jobs from top companies. Instead he chose, like a true entrepreneur, to carve out his own path to success. So he started FOODKING.

His mother worked as an ayah in an Anganvadi to educate him and his siblings. Later he went on to complete his higher education in the prestigious BITS Pilani and IIM Ahmedabad.

In the beginning, he took a loan of Rs 20 lakh and started Foodking in August 2006. Initially the losses were poised at Rs 2000 a day. The cafeteria’s he set up initially did not work according to plan and he soon came to the conviction that only by selling in large volumes that any profit could be made.

In 2006 IIM A alumni meet, he hoped to bag a contract but could not.

In march 2007 he got an offer to start a unit at BITS, Pilani. This contract proved profitable. Spurred with this initial profit and with the money that he borrowed from his IIM A friends, he wanted to move ahead. He got BITS Goa contract which was to be his biggest break. He had to cater to over 1300 students and the sales peaked at 65,000 Rs per day.

Then he got an opportunity to serve at SRM deemed college which boasts of over 17,000 students!

Right now he has a turn around of Rs 3.5 crore per annum. By next year he hope to increase it to Rs 20 crores.

At present he has BITS hyderabad in his hands and it all set to be operational by July 2008. So the future does look rosy to this Foodking.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/aug/31spec.htm

Popularity: 41%

Have you ever constructed a house of your own? If you have, then you would  know how the average middle class Indian consumer suffers in getting cement, iron and steel required for his house construction.

Our Indian Govt is trying very hard to reduce cost of cement. But the present circumstances are not favorable it as previously an excise tax of Rs400/ton has been collected. But now it has been increased to 550Rs. At the same time cost of coal has been increased to greater extent. Apart from these increased transport charges & salaries are added draw backs. Because of these factors, the Govt is still in its own trials to make the cost reasonable. Also, to keep inflation under control, it restricted the cement exports from India. Expected consequence of this action was the reduction in the gap between Demand and Supply of cement. As soon it was declared by FTP(Foreign Trade Policy) to make the relaxation and reduction schemes invalid on export, our Govt has decided to ban the cement exports from our country.

Check out the following statistics. In the financial year 2007-2008, our country recorded 175 million tons of cement usage. Whereas for exports it was just 3.5 million tons.  This shows that cement industries haven’t got any vital role to play in international market when compared to the Indian market.

In India except a few, remaining all industries are least bothered about the export of cement. Those few industries are from Gujarat & Maharashtra. These big industries are continuing to export just to keep up their entity in international levels, even they are not yielding profits. But now that too has stopped. With a brief view of the present scenario, what can the government do to save the Indian consumer?

Its upto the big guns like ACC, Ambuja Cement, India Cement, Ultratech Cement, Grasim and other smaller players like Sanghi Industries, Birla Corporation, Zuari Cement, Binani Industries, NCL Industries, Saurashtra Cement and JK Cement to try and sell cement within reasonable limits.

Popularity: 7%