HERALD: What made you do this business?
SUNIL SHRIVASTAVA: We had a recession in 2008-09 and being a CEO of a jewellery company, I realised that recession hits luxury products first. But, a necessity like food will never go out of business. The largest company in diamonds was having a turnover of $ 3.2 billion and largest company in food and restaurant business had a turnover of $ 25 billion. So, having always aspired to be the number one in the world, I thought it is a better place to be.
HERALD: How is Goa as a market?
SS: I think Goa as market is very under-rated. Many advertising companies are understanding that Goa is a fantastic market to test their product because of the kind of people who reside in Goa. Goa has also one of the highest per capita incomes in the country and among the top two states as far as education is concerned. Along with it, Goa is also blessed by having a floating population from all over the world during the tourist season and domestic Indian populace during off season. We see that Goans are well travelled and they appreciate quality product. For instance, a biscotti is selling well. It was originally supposed to be had with wine but now people have evolved and they relish it with coffee and snacks in general.
HERALD: How many products do you have and how is the growth in sales?
SS: We have more than 80 products but at any point in time we have at least 35 products showcased in each category which includes, sandwiches, cakes, pastries etc. Yes, the off take from our own stores have been tremendous and in a single unit, year on year we invairably grow by more than 30 per cent which is very good. Yes, this shows that market exists.
HERALD: What are your expansion plans?
SS: We had grown to about nine outlets but we decided to shrink it to three right now with the intention of going to 40 outlets all across Goa with about 3 to 4 on the beach belt, but with franchisees. Since we are now focusing on product development and four new brands we will offer those as independent franchisee or we can have it as a food mall if the franchisee has a large enough space and investment capacity which could be in about 120 square meters and investment capacity could be anywhere between Rs 6 lakh to 15 lakh depending upon the size of the space available and number of brands a franchisee would like to take. We are very bullish on Goa as a market as we are offering a lot of products which are consumed by the local populace.
HERALD: When are you going to launch your new brands and what are they?
SS: We will be launching our new brand within next two weeks. Since Carasid is all wheat based, Chrisun is a rice based soups and salad mini meal brand. Nobody offers specifically a rice-based mini meal chain in the world and no such brand exists in the world now. So, ours will be the first which will bring-in by and large all the most popular cuisine of India. Secondly, we will be launching Eggstatic, which will offer almost everything in egg based cuisine which is unique too. The third brand is Foldy’s, which is a “paratha filling” based cuisine. So expanding internationally will be almost automatic as Indian cuisine is very difficult to find outside India at a reasonable rate.
HERALD: So which are the countries you are targeting?
SS: Primarily where Indians are like USA, UK, Middle East, Hong Kong, Canada etc where there is a sizeable Indian-origin populace. We have done a strategic exposure of our intentions by being featured in the International Havard Business Journal in 2015 where we have elucidated what exactly our plans are as an Indian start-up. Eventually, Indian investors and venture capitalists will look at us. We expect that our first international exposure within the next three years.
