If you are short of key resources…

Kalyan – a suburb near Mumbai back in 2004, Venkatesh Iyer (Venky), Co-founder of Goli Vadapav, found it disturbing that he did not have any Indian brand in the list of products he consumed on a daily basis. So the gutsy entrepreneur decided to make something India can be proud of.

Venky and Co-founder Shivadas Menon are self-confessed foodies who had decided early on that food would be their way to glory, the actual product choice was tougher. While Indian fast food options are plenty, to choose a product that could be a success they applied 3 TEST Blueprint to make that ultimate decision.

They chose Vadapav because it stood true to all the 3 tests out of their blueprint. First Vadapav was easy & fast to make as compared to other Indian food choices. Secondly, It’s a finger food, so you don’t need a plate, spoon or table. And third, it’s a mobile food which you can move & still eat. These 3 tests helped them save on precious resources like time, space & human resources.

Venky and Shivadas started with their own investment and the traditional way of hiring a cook and other staff. However, this traditional model presented them with many problems initially: from wastage, pilferage and even the risk of shutdown, in case the cook decided to move out. They had to find a solution to this unpredictability. Help came from a friend, who was heading the processed foods business of a US company that supplied frozen vegetable & chicken patties to McDonald’s in India. And thus vadas started getting automated – machines helped make standard sized and shaped vadas. Thanks to this investment in technology, Goli overcome three big problems in a single shot – of wastage, pilferage and standardization.

Today, Goli has a central manufacturing capacity from where vadas are prepared and shipped across the country. Their technology enables vadas to be stored in a frozen form and sent every 2 or 3 days to the actual shops, where they are again stored properly. This has made it possible for the Goli vadas to have a shelf life of as much as nine months.

With the product perfected, Venky and Shivadas started looking for options to set up shop. Real estate in Mumbai was pricey and therefore they hit upon a novel idea to use Aarey milk booths to double up as Goli outlets. They acquired 350 Aarey milk booths and at a shot, 350 Goli stores were opened. However, political trouble ( vada pav had become a political hot potato then) and disagreement between the booth owner and political parties cut short this dream, and all Goli outlets had to shut down. As a result, they also lost the first round of funding money. “That was a very tough time, and people thought Goli was finished. All our money was finished and then immediately Lehmann brothers also happened, so no investor was willing to put their money.

But Goli vada pav sailed through the crisis. The Nasik store happened and we grew across India,” shares Venky. Moving into Nasik was a blessing in disguise, because not only did it give the business a fresh lease of life, but also defined the future expansion strategy for Goli. As a company, they first entered Maharashtra and consolidated there, and then they went to other states. Today, Goli has grown aggressively to 350 stores across 90 cities & 21 states,

“We have had many challenges, but if there are no challenges in your business you will not grow. So pilferage, wastage was a challenge, fund-raising was a challenge, then real estate was a challenge, then because of the political situation we got wiped out and had to move out of Mumbai, but then we found a place in Nasik and that was evolution.

Goli is a profitable company today & earns revenues more than 60 crores yearly. Today Goli vada pav is studied at Harvard as a case study.

Goli khaya kya

Learning from the story

1. For every problem; exists a solution. Have faith in your idea and persevere.

2. If you are short of core resources, find the people who have those resources. Propose a win-win deal & aggregate the resources, just how they aggregated 350 stores in one shot having a win-win deal with Aaarey milk booth owners. New age business models thrive on aggregation of resources.

3. For a food business to succeed & scale, asks these 3 questions, Is it quick to make, deliver & eat? Is it finger food? & is it mobile food?

Questions to ask ourselves

1. Just like food business, are there 3 TEST questions ( a blueprint) for other businesses to be successful?

2. What is a New Age Business Model?

3. What is the difference between Traditional & New Age Business Models

If you really want to learn the successful blueprint of any business & convert your traditional business into new age business; consider this as a personal invitation to our half-day seminar ‘Put your Business On Autopilot’.

Apart from above, here’s what I commit, you will learn in this Seminar.

1. How to at least DOUBLE your income.

2. How to build a valuable business which can be sold in part or full if needed.

3. & How to PUT your Business on AUTOPILOT, which WORKS and GROWS without you.

HURRY very few seats left now