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

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How big that would have been, was of course not very clear for a young entrepreneur who was starting with a very small capital in 1976. From 1976 till about 1984-85, there was a great deal of struggle. In 1992, Bharti Enterprises was all of a sale of 25 crores, a reasonable amount but nothing significant even in 1992. But clearly, something had to be done to take a grand stand position on the national stage. 1992 offered me an opportunity to move into my main love at that time, telecommunications. I was one of the early entrepreneurs who took a pole position in 1987 by manufacturing telephone sets and I took my first call in position in mobile telephony launching India’s first mobile phone in 1995-1996 in Delhi. Airtel was born at that time.

As they say, sometimes you need one good break and its my belief that all of us will get a chance to get that one good break. In enterprise, in career, in life. We need to be there, to grab it. John, a chairman, who once had a big bet with me, told me, that “there is no doubt that you have to have exceptional luck to be extremely successful at a young age. But it is our duty to align himself or herself in the line of luck. “And that meant you had to persevere and work towards it.

Airtel upped the ante and went on to expand all over India. Today airtel is present in 5,200 towns, 270,000 villages. Every highway and every railway of this country has an airtel radio signal. Today Airtel has a position at number 3 in India in terms of market cap. Having a market cap which is not only big for India but is considered on an international stage to be a market cap worthy of some recognition.

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