I just came home after attending StartUp Saturday, I'm fortunate to have an opportunity to meet these people who have went there, done that!
Today's event was about Food industry start ups and I was excited about it as I have a couple of ideas in this segment. Entrepreneurs who spoke today were Rahul Chabbra - Founder of Fishtro, Saurabh Sengupta - Founder and Head of Operations at Zomato.com, Sachin Bharadwaj - founder of TastyKhana.com and Jaydeep Burman - founder of FAASOS.
Rahul pointed out that the Sea food business in out country is still very immature. What I liked about this guy is while starting into a food business - territory he was unaware about - he made a point to meet the best people in the industry. He meet the best chefs in sea food in India, best food processing technologist in India and other such people - it's important to meet the best people in the domain you are entering into, you can get some invaluable inputs from them - a great takeaway!
Sachin Agarwal stated that TastyKhana was not generating +ve cash-flows even after a year of operation and that made him think is it worth to continue in loss - that's when his first investment came in - just about a lakh rupees and that was one of the turning point he said. Perseverance is important.
Saurabh Sengupta was very dynamic and touched many pain points of budding entrepreneurs. It is very important to know who has a sense of ownership among the people who are working with you. How to recognize them? According to him the one who recognizes and comes up with problems in the business and even better suggests some solutions is the one! Those who are worried only about their work/responsibilities will never contribute value to the startup - its the thinking about the whole business will make the person stand out from the rest. Another point he put beautifully when asked about viral marketing the product, he said "A good product will viral in itself. No need to do anything else - just build a good product". Hats off to this statement - its easy to understand but difficult to implement.
Jaydeep - the founder of FAASOS mentioned a point which I liked - he said taking care of employees is very important. You need to work as a team and its not only salary that they work for. He mentioned an incident where FAASOS funded one of their chef's son's heart transplant surgery. He says "People don't work for companies, they work for you" - terrific!
Note: StartUp Saturday is an event for connecting entrepreneurs organised by Headstart Network Foundation ~ its a informal gathering where entrepreneurs share their stories and get a chance to meet like-minded people.
