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%

Ralegan Siddhi is just a rural village. Yet, it is one of the most talked about village in the whole of India. One inspired individual without a degree in economics or management has inspired the whole village to act for its own betterment and it is now a model village to be emulated.

In the beginning, prior to 1975:

1. The village had hardly any arable land. The water which the rains provided, ran down because of the undulated nature of the land.

2.Poverty was rampant.

3.Prostitution was prevalent.

4. Men resorted to liquor to drown their difficulties, were idle and resigned to their fate.

5. There were hardly any schools or any school going children.

The solution to the above problems proved to be “co-operative collaboration” with a selfless and courageous leader at the helm.

The Buddha once said:

“He who struggles in the interest of his own self, so that he himself may be great or powerful or rich or famous will have no reward, but he who struggles for righteousness and truth, will have great reward, for even his defeat will be victory.”

In conformity with the above words, Anna worked. Like a true entrepreneur, without having any clear picture of what lay ahead, without any hint of understanding about what he would eventually accomplish, he worked. He equipped himself with discipline, humility, patience and above all perseverance. He met all the challenges head on with nothing to trust except his intuition.

A brief overview of his life:

1940, January 15th was the time Anna was born. The place was a small village, Bhingar near Ahmedabad. His father was an unskilled labourer. Anna studied upto 7 grade in Mumbai. He started selling flower to aid his poor family and eventually set up his own shop. He later fell into bad company and got into a brawl which resulted in a person being nearly killed. Fearing imminent arrest, he fled and joined the Indian Army.

In the army, he became very depressed, with thoughts of suicide looming in his head. He had a feeling of aimlessness in his life. Two incidents, however, changed his life.

During the Indo-Pak war, in 1965, the truck in which he was traveling was blown off. However, Anna along with his colleagues, jumped from the truck prior to that when they got the hint from a low flying Pakistani plane. Inspite of this, except for Anna, the rest were killed.

In Nagaland, where Anna was stationed, the Nagas attacked his camp. Luckily for Anna, he was answering the call of nature just then. When he returned, he found all his colleagues shot dead.

These twin incidents convinced Anna that destiny had other plans for him.

When he came across Swami Vivekananda’s words he was all set for action.

“This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.”

In the next issue, we will see the method of work adopted by Anna and how it transformed the village.

Popularity: 9%