Millionaire Mondays by Backstage with Millionaires

Explorex’s website: https://explorex.co/ Ankit got his start building an online community called YouthPad, with the tagline “Have your say” - ​​the website’s goal was to bring together the youth of Delhi NCR onto common platform, and he ran this platform from 2007 to 2010 when he got a job working at Flipkart.By 2015 Ankit had proven himself to be a formidable intrapreneur, and was promoted to the position of Chief Business Officer - everything was going well for Ankit, but in 2016, after more than 6 years at the company, he left and teamed up with Mukesh Bansal, Flipkart’s Head of Commerce & Advertising to built Curefit, and over the next four years, Curefit evolved into India’s leading health and fitness startup. They acquired numerous gyms across the country, worked with celebrities like Hrithik Roshan, and launched a health food brand called EatFit.Ankit Nagori had a vision to build marketplace of health restaurants for people who go to the gym and workout. So Ankit Nagori and Mukest Bansal started Curefoods and Acquihired EatFit as their first brand to build one of the biggest healthy-food facing house of brands startup in India. Now, Curefoods currently operates brands like EatFit, CakeZone, Sharief Bhai, Nomad Pizza, Frozen Bottle, Olio, Rolls on Wheels, Great Indian Khichdi, Home Plate, Juno's Pizza, Ovenfresh.

00:00 Intro 04:04 How Matt started a coffee business 07:13 Challenges while roasting coffee in India 08:58 Blue Tokai's marketing strategy 09:49 Blur Tokai's ₹40 lakh roaster 11:19 The raise of Blue Tokai 15:25 Opening their first location 21:25 Challenges faced while expanding 24:28 How Shivam Shahi joined Blue Tokai 27:01 Becoming a cafe 28:39 Delhi Police seals Blue Tokai locations 32:03 Evolving coffee culture in India 32:43 Blue Tokai during the pandemic 34:56 Blue Tokai post pandemic 36:30 Blue Tokai vs other cafes 38:56 Will coffee price increase in India? 43:27 Blue Tokai products 45:52 Blue Tokai going global? 47:14 Challenges for becoming profitable 51:08 Bootstrapped vs external capital 52:35 Blue Tokai IPO 56:11 Outro In the United States, third wave coffee culture in the United States was in full swing. During this third wave, concepts like farm to cup and single origin beans were popularised, and Matt Chitharanjan had been living in the Bay Area from 2003 to 2007, so he’d jumped into this movement headfirst during his time there. He even bought a small roaster and started preparing small batches of coffee as a hobby. When Matt came to India in 2011 for a 1-year job opportunity in Chennai, he spotted an opportunity. He saw the Cafe Coffee Days and the Baristas of India and realised that coffee’s third wave hadn’t reached India yet. It was in Chennai that Matt met his wife and co-founder Namrata Asthana, and after moving to Delhi in 2012, they got to work setting up India’s first homegrown specialty coffee brand, Blue Tokai. Now, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters is India’s largest specialty coffee brand, with its headquarters in Gurgaon, India.

Bert Mueller, Founder of California Burrito, shares the journey of starting a QSR chain in India. They discuss the success of their first location, the challenges of franchising, their disappointment with nachos, and their growth story amidst the pandemic. Bert also recounts the stories behind their ingredient procurement and driving a Maruti Omni.

Amit Nanwani, former INTEL developer, and Diksha Pande, co-founder of Samosa Party, discuss the journey of starting their business, including the challenges and the transition to becoming a B2C brand. They also highlight the importance of professionalism, attention to detail, and providing exceptional customer service. The podcast also touches on the concept of remote management for restaurant owners and the experiences of scaling a business alongside day jobs.

Book a free demo with Explorex here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wdxFNOxpQZ29F9MpD48e7Acyk5y Explorex’s website: https://explorex.co/ 00:00 Intro 1:52 Vijayawada - Barkaas' First Location 7:57 Hustle - The Struggles of Running a Restaurant 10:16 Mangalagiri - Barkaas' Second Location 12:05 Money - The Financials of Barkaas 17:09 Bengaluru - Experiences in Marketing 20:39 Expansion - The Challenges of Franchising 25:05 Scale - Managing 10 Locations 27:29 COVID-19 - Barkaas During the Pandemic 33:13 New Normal - Bouncing Back After the Pandemic 38:25 Round 2 - Expanding to 20+ Locations 40:00 Strategy - The Barkaas Business Model 45:34 Global - Barkaas' International Expansion 49:13 Gyaan - Advice for Young Entrepreneurs 51:38 New Frontiers - Old Mill Brewery 56:03 Outro Gowtham Kudapa launched his first Arabic cuisine restaurant, Barkaas, in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, in 2016. The idea for Barkaas as an Arabic mandi-centric restaurant first came to him on a trip to Sharjah where he was fascinated by the culinary culture of sitting while eating. He decided to bring the tradition of mandi back with him to Vijayawada. Gowtham Kudapa is a hotel management graduate, and understood flavours and recipes well, and from this education he also understood hospitality. Using his skills and experience, he was able to craft an Arabic mandi restaurant menu which preserved the dishes and styles of food from the UAE, while enhancing flavours and adding masalas which would be recognised and appreciated by the palate, and more specifically, the palate of people in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. Barkaas also brought in new ways of experiencing food via large plates upon which food for multiple people was placed and eaten, as well as cushioned seating areas instead of elevated tables and chairs like most restaurants. Gowtham Kudapa and his business partners spent between ₹30-₹35 lakh to get their first location up and running, and this initial ROI paid off immediately. Barkaas saw a tremendous response from the people of Vijayawada, and it quickly became the most popular Arabic restaurants in Andhra Pradesh. This meant that Gowtham Kudapa and his business partners and staff often worked 16-18 hour days just to keep up with demand. In spite of these challenges, Barkaas expanded to a second location about 6 months after the success of the first location. This second location was located in Mangalagiri, Andhra Pradesh, about 15 kilometers from the first location. This second location was very successful. From the financial side though, Barkaas was doing well. They were taking a margin of 35-40% which was amazing. These margins enabled the Barkaas team to think about expanding beyond Andhra Pradesh, to Karnataka, and more specifically Bengaluru. Expanding to Bengaluru was a real challenge for Barkaas. This was when Barkaas began allocating some of their expenses to marketing. It took 6 months for Barkaas to begin seeing acceptable footfall in Bengaluru. In Bengaluru, Barkaas took a very conscientious call to only onboard franchisees who were ready to be restaurant operators and managers. They didn't want any absentee franchisees. By taking control of the kitchen and inserting their own people into franchisee's locations, Barkaas was able to bring restaurant quality back to the level that they had envisioned in 2016. However, then the pandemic hit, forcing Barkaas to halt their expansion plans. As the pandemic came to an end, Barkaas began experimenting with technology to offer a contactless dining experience, including QR code menus from their restaurant operating system platform, Explorex. Today, Barkaas is still doing well financially - they take a margin of about 20-25%, and have expanded to more than 20 locations across India. They have plans to go global too, and Gowtham Kudapa is also setting up his first brewery, called Old Mill Brewery. This new business, Old Mill Brewery, will be established in 2023.

Book a free demo with Explorex here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wdxFNOxpQZ29F9MpD48e7Acyk5y Explorex’s website: https://explorex.co/ There’s an Indian burger startup that is stealing market share from Burger King and McDonald’s. Its founder hadn’t tasted a burger before 2010. Now he’s running a ₹100 crore ARR burger chain with 100+ locations. This is the story of Biggies Burger: Biraja Rout is from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. He comes from a regular working-class family. In 2010 he got a job at Infosys, and briefly shifted to Mysuru for training: it was here that he tried his first burger. The experience had an unusually profound impact on him. After shifting to Bengaluru to work at Infosys’ campus in Electronic City, Biraja borrowed ₹1.5 lakh from a friend and purchased a fabricated 5 sq. ft. booth. This was the first Biggies Burger location. He would man the booth after office hours and on weekends. Biraja was passionate about burgers but he had no business experience. From 2011 until 2015 he rarely had more than ₹1,000 in his bank account, and his motorcycle would often run out of petrol while he drove to Namdhari's to buy expensive, fresh lettuce for his burgers. Biggies Burger’s second kiosk was set up in Bhubaneswar in 2012. Biraja would transport ingredients from Bengaluru via the Prasanthi Express train’s AC chambers, as an affordable alternative to expensive cold chain logistics. He lost money on every Bhubaneswar burger sold. Biggies Burger became extremely popular in Bhubaneswar - it was essentially the only burger joint in a 200 kilometre radius. This caught the attention of Sandeep Satpathy, who approached Biraja about setting up a franchised location in Raipur in 2013. Raipur is a largely vegetarian city, and at this time the brand name was Biggies Burger ‘n’ More. One of their secondary product lines were hot dogs, which were made of chicken meat. These meat products were underperforming in Raipur, and so Biraja decided to create a veg option. However, due to a lack of quality veg hot dog products in the Indian market, Biraja wasn’t impressed and decided to import hot dogs instead, sourcing them from Malaysia. These hot dogs equated to a loss of ₹860 per kilo. Biraja sustained this loss for several years. By 2016, the business was still in a financially precarious position, owing between ₹18-20 lakh to various vendors. During this time, on any given day, Biggies Burger was ₹10,000 away from collapse, and when Biraja got married in 2016, he couldn’t afford to buy a blazer. Biraja’s fortunes finally turned when a master territory franchise was established and four franchisees paid their fees in rapid succession. Suddenly, Biraja and Biggies were out of debt. By the end of 2016, Biggies had 18 locations. In 2016, Sandeep Satpathy joined Biggies burger as a co-founder, along with Abilash Bellur, who had purchased the Electronic City location in 2013 as a franchisee. Abilash Bellur took on operations, Sandeep spearheaded business development, and Biraja focused on R&D. From 2016 onwards, the business was able to achieve financial stability. Biggies’ parent company, Beamer Food and Beverages, also launched a new subsidiary brand, Bigguy’s Wingery, to compete with KFC in the chicken QSR space. Today, Biggies has 124 locations, and is doing annualised revenue of ₹100 crore.

Book a free demo with Explorex here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wdxFNOxpQZ29F9MpD48e7Acyk5y Explorex’s website: https://explorex.co/ Sohrab Sitaram began his career as a manager at Taj Hotels. In 2000, he started his first business, No Escape, a nightclub in Connaught Place, New Delhi. Over the next 14 years, he would go on to start numerous restaurants in multiple cities across India, including Tabularasa, Chi Kitchen & Bar, Shalom, and Italic. Then, in 2013, Sohrab Sitaram was approached by Agastya Dalmia and Aman Arora. This co-founder duo had been trying to revitalise the Keventers brand, which had been in the Dalmia family since 1940 when it was purchased by Ramkrishna Dalmia from the nephew of Edward Keventer, the original founder of Keventers. Edward Keventer had come from Sweden to India as a dairy technologist, and had started a successful dairy business soon after arriving in India. The brand soared to new heights after being acquired by Ramkrishna Dalmia, but when their main Chanakyapuri factory was shut down, the business languished. Ramkrishna Dalmia walked away from Keventers, and over the years, the brand dissolved into a handful of unofficial, unrecognised locations run by Keventers original distributors. In 2013, Agastya Dalmia and Aman Arora attempted to revitalise the brand, but without a solid strategy, their attempt failed. It wasn’t until Sohrab Sitaram stepped in as a consultant, then partner and co-founder, that Keventers began to reclaim its forgotten success. Agastya Dalmia and Aman Arora had attempted to set up their first location in Pitampura, in Delhi, but Sohrab Sitaram recommended Select CITYWALK instead. At this premium location, Keventers saw a lot of footfall, and soon enough the brand was opening franchises in cities across India. Keventers expanded via a franchised business model. However, when the pandemic hit, many of Keventers’ franchise owners couldn’t sustain themselves. Many, about 70-75%, sold their franchises back to Keventers. Others turned to less honest methods, diluting ingredients in order to cut costs. This resulted in a lawsuit wherein one of their franchisees allegedly sold sub-standard milk products at a Keventers outlet. The judge didn’t have good things to say about Keventers though, saying, “Keventers was no longer as good as it used to be,” and that their “products are not at all fit for consumption.” In subsequent years, Keventers has taken a company-owned business strategy to keep quality under control, and has also been expanding their menu to keep up with changing tastes. Apart from normal dairy milkshakes, Keventers now offers sundaes, hot chocolate, vegan dairy-free milkshakes, and they’re also working on a line of offerings which have less sugar than their traditional milkshakes. Under the leadership of Sohrab Sitaram as CEO, Keventers has also expanded to Kenya, Dubai, Oman, and Abu Dhabi. Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@backstagewithmillionaires

Book a free demo with Explorex here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wdxFNOxpQZ29F9MpD48e7Acyk5y Explorex’s website: https://explorex.co/ Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan started Eatables in 2016 while they were studying at IIT Kharagpur. This startup was their answer to a problem they had discovered while visiting restaurants in Kolkata, wherein many of the restaurant menus that they’d discover online while on campus at IIT Kharagpur were inaccurate and contained incorrect prices or items that were no longer available when they actually travelled to Kolkata. When Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan asked restaurants why this was happening, they were told that it would often take a week or two for restaurants to actually update their menus on Zomato. Mainak and Pritam saw this as an opportunity to build a platform which would enable restaurants to quickly and easily update their menus online. Sadly, their platform didn’t see widespread adoption, with only 250 restaurants signing up and 10,000 lifetime downloads overall. They had hoped that if they relocated Eatables to Bengaluru, it would see more adoption, so Mainak dropped out of IIT Kharagpur in 2017 and shifted to Bengaluru. However, only 100 restaurants signed up. Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan were devastated. Their startup was failing. Towards the end of 2018, Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan decided that offering an app for restaurants to keep their online menus up-to-date wasn’t working, and so they pivoted to providing restaurants with digital menus that their customers could scan with QR codes. However, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and stopped Eatable in its tracks. Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan had basically been bootstrapping Eatable up until this point, having only raised a small FFF round. However, when the pandemic hit, Mainak asked his mentor for ₹15 lakh and was able to keep the startup alive even though all of Bengaluru’s restaurants were shut. In 2020, Mainak and Pritam applied for Y Combinator for the third time. Their initial attempts had failed because they struggled to get through the interview round due to nerves. However, by their third attempt, they were able to crack the Y Combinator interview and got to be a part of YC’s first remote cohort. Their pitch involved Mainak explaining how Eatable would build an ecosystem for restaurants, solving all of their problems with a single platform. This impressed the team at Y Combinator, and eventually Eatable was able to raise $150,000 from YC. Then, in August of 2020 Explorex raised an $850,000 seed round, bringing their total fundraise to $1M at the end of 2020. In 2021 when restaurants began opening back up again, Mainak and Pritam onboard three breweries in Bengaluru for their MVP, which consisted of an ordering and order management system. Their new customers loved Explorex, and the company realised that they had finally found product/market fit. In 2022, Explorex raised $5 million from angels like Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, James Park, co-founder of Fitbit, and Taher Savliwala, co-founder of Relief Technologies. Today, Explorex powers more than 1,000 restaurants across 15 cities in India, including Easy Tiger, Forty Six Ounces, La Casa, Jook, ShakesBierre, Stories, Vapour, Fire Station, Fox In The Field, Cafe Azzure, Oia, and Tiger Tiger Brewhouse.

Learn more about Plivo here: https://www.plivo.com/ In this podcast, we sat down with Venky Balasubramanian to talk about the story of Plivo, a cloud communications platform that simplifies and personalises businesses’ customer communications. Every kind of business, from startups to public companies, can benefit from Plivo’s enterprise-grade communications platform, which includes a premium carrier network with connectivity in more than 190 countries, an API platform for messaging and voice calls, and solutions for sales and support teams. Venky Balasubramanian started Plivo in 2011 along with his co-founder Michael Ricordeau. Initially, Plivo was an open-source GitHub project, but after attending a developer conference in Chicago, the co-founder duo decided to commercialise their voice-based app communication framework. Initially, they applied for Y Combinator’s Winter 2011 Batch, but were rejected. Venky emailed Paul Graham to ask why they had been rejected, and he said: 1. Venky B and Michael Ricordeau didn’t have a lot of in-person co-founder experience; they had only met offline in Chicago at that conference, and 2. Plivo was a pre-revenue company. Venky Balasubramanian got to work proving to Paul Graham that he and Michael had what it took to succeed as a business, scoring Plivo’s first customer and beginning to generate revenue. He also raised a pre-seed round from Morpheus, Seeders and One97 Mobility Fund, along with Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Following this, Plivo was accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer 2012 batch, and counted companies like 9GAG, Boosted Boards, Coinbase, Soylent, and Zapier as its batchmates. Venky B clearly remembers seeing Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong offering other Y Combinator founders bitcoins in exchange for signing up for Coinbase. By the time Plivo’s time at Y Combinator was over, they were generating more revenue than most of their fellow startups, and were able to raise a $1.5M seed round from investors like YC, Battery Ventures, A16Z, and Qualcomm Ventures. This fundraise grabbed media attention and also solidified Plivo’s reputation as a business with trustworthy, legitimate backers. In 2017, Plivo raised $8M in venture debt, rather than pursuing a Series A. While these funds did temporarily alter the startup’s culture, Venky B and Michael Ricordeau were able to course-correct, saving the company from the high-burn trap many other SaaS businesses fall into. By raising debt instead of a Series A, Venky and Michael were also able to retain their equity in Plivo. Plivo has no plans to go public or sell, and are looking forward to growing Plivo’s new offerings including Contacto and Sellular. Contacto is an omnichannel contact center that seamlessly combines your customer conversations and your existing systems, and Sellular is a modern sales platform built for Salesforce users. Both Contacto and Sellular have been internally funded by and set up within Plivo, but with siloed teams and goals which enable them to grow independently. Today Plivo has a team of 300, the company is fully remote across USA and India, they’re profitable, and are bringing in somewhere between $50 to $100 million in annual revenue from customers across 190+ countries. They’ve also been profitable for 6.5 years! Stay updated on what’s new at Plivo: Twitter — https://twitter.com/plivo Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/Plivo/ LinkedIn — https://in.linkedin.com/company/plivo-inc GitHub — https://github.com/plivo Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rGPalovc6AKsfbOyjh32p

In this episode of the Backstage With Millionaires podcast, we sit down with Awis Ahmed, founder of Pixxel, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey. 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:41 Building the pod 00:06:25 Working at SpaceX 00:07:31 Why Awais chose asteroid mining 00:14:11 Why no one got into hyperspectral commercial space 00:22:23 Raising funds to build a satellite 00:32:58 Building the first satellite 00:43:54 Raising funds during the pandemic 00:49:41 How Pixxel generates revenue 00:50:21 Launching the satellite 1:09:58 Outro Pixxel is a space data company building a constellation of the world’s highest-resolution hyperspectral earth imaging satellites and the analytical tools to mine insights from the data. The images gathered by Pixxel's satellites will provide global coverage every 24 hours and help detect, monitor, and predict global phenomena across agriculture, mining, environment, and energy use cases. About Awais Ahmed: Awais Ahmed started his professional journey at HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited), as a research intern. Around the same time in 2016, he was also the founder member and engineering lead at Hyperloop India. He started Pixxel in 2019.