The enthusiastic entrepreneur

"An entrepreneur keeps on creating value. He does not think of how much money he can make but of what the company can become.”

Guest speaker Dheeraj Gupta, the youthful chairman and managing director of Jumbo King Vada Pavs, shared his knowledge and experience with members of the World Zarathushti Chamber of Commerce — India (WZCC-I) and of its Bombay Chapter who had forgathered at the West End Hotel to breakfast together and attend the annual general meeting of both organizations on July 27, 2008.

An MBA in finance from Symbiosis University, Gupta said the question of getting a job was not acceptable to his traditional Marwari family. Building on his family’s sweetmeats business, he initially "tried to package mithai (Indian sweets) and sell it like chocolate, and lost 15 lakh rupees,” according to WZCC-I president and management guru Minoo Shroff who had invited and introduced the speaker. Inspired by the story of McDonald’s hamburgers, Gupta replicated it to suit Indian conditions, selling packaged vada pavs (piquant potato patty sandwiched in a mini loaf) at an affordable price (initially at Rs 5 per piece which has now risen to Rs 7) at the right place, said Shroff, adding that the business now sells 40,000 vada pavs per day from 50 outlets. "He is aiming at 100 outlets and thinking of 3,000 by the end of next year,” according to Shroff.

The other guest speaker that morning was management consultant Dr N. H. Atthreya who defined enterprise as "finding a legitimate need and meeting it legitimately.” He noted that Zoroastrians enjoy the "principle of natural advantage” being "first class suppliers and dependable employers, for, if you are not dependable, do not have integrity, who would do business with you?”

Atthreya identified land as the most important resource and which the community enjoyed but which was "today being taken away by political connivance and muscle power.” He urged the gathering to make an inventory of trust properties and legally modify the trust deeds where enterprise was not one of its aims. The trust deed may say it cannot give the land for business but it was OK to do so for a school. Education, taking care of the aged and children is also a form of enterprise, he noted. "Think in terms of solving problems for others, not in terms of opportunities. Think of it as fun,” suggested the expert, citing a case where an entrepreneur collected blind people from rural areas, got doctors from Surat to agree to operate on them and collected donations of Rs 1,000 per operation to restore eyesight. "History will say ‘so many owed so much to so few.’ The ‘so few’ are Zoroastrians,” he prodded the community.

Steeped in stories about the start of McDonald’s, WalMart and J. R. D. Tata’s biography, Gupta commented that these entrepreneurs "built from nothing; they created something without too many support systems. They were at high risk because they did what hadn’t been done before, but they were at the right place at the right time…

"At the end of the day all entrepreneurs are hard core HR (human resource) men. JRD was one such…”

Gupta, who predicted that India will have 10 such chains as Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s, was asked what kind of competition he faced. "At every railway station there is a vada pavwalla. We serve it hot because that’s what our customers always demand.” Also, he emphasized the hygiene that Jumbo King boasts of and which the roadside vada pavwalla lacks. He stated that he had started with 500 vada pavs a day but in the space of a year the volume of sales increased to 1,500 a day. While his market research revealed that 30+ percent of his customers have some fixed notions about what to eat, the new generation is choosing Jumbo King: Youths account for 65 percent of his clientele. They mainly start in their college years.

"Like the Maruti 800, our product is aimed at a particular type of customer. The man in a hurry wants a snack which is quick, hygienic and inexpensive. Our vision is to make vada pavs the national snack of the country. When we go to other cities, we’ll be marketing Bombay,” stated Gupta who has already got a toehold in Gujarat.

Admitting that there are "huge disparities between stores (Jumbo King outlets are franchisees), Gupta claims that there is "so much technology now going into the product. It’s a huge industry where Jumbo King will set the standard all over India.” With controlled prices and expanding volumes ­— they consume more than 2,000 kilograms of potatoes a day and expect the figure to rise — he spoke of backward integration, of going into farming…

"We are defining and redefining the standards of vada pav. It’s a sin product. We tell people it’s OK to sin once a week!”

Earlier, in his presidential address, Shroff had recalled Reliance Industries founder Dhirubhai Ambani’s words to his shareholders: "Maaraama bharosho raakho (trust me); I will deliver,” noting, "The sine qua non of entrepreneurship is self-confidence.” Citing the examples of the foremost first generation entrepreneurs in the community today — Lord Karan Bilimoria whose Cobra Beer Shroff says is valued at over four million dollars and Dr Villoo Morawala-Patell whose life sciences business is not easily valued — Shroff stated, "I don’t agree that we have lost our sense of enterprise…We Parsis have had a great field day and now we are resurging… The Tatas have invested over 120 billion dollars.” Referring to the promised one lakh rupee car, the Nano, Shroff continued, "It is a revolutionary concept to create a car for the average individual. Godrej’s realty business has the largest resources and funds. Pallon Mistry (of Shapoorji Pallonji) told me, ‘Havé to hamé Guyana poogi gayaach (Now we are working in Guyana).’ The Tatas have gone into infrastructure. The sky is the limit but they were all stagnant a few years ago… Our past has been great. To make the future greater is in our hands.”

Urging WZCC members not to be despondent when there is a fall in membership — "It happens in all organizations” — Shroff emphasized the necessary attitude to strengthen the organization: "Don’t just think of what you are getting out of it. Think also of what you are putting in.” Underscoring the need to learn from the mistakes one makes as well as those of others, Shroff quoted what a former CEO of cosmetics manufacturer Helen-Curtis had told him: "I would not employ anybody who has not made mistakes.”

Executive vice president of WZCC-I Kersi Limathwalla reiterated the twofold objectives of the organization: to increase its membership and to extend the reach of those already in business. He dwelt on the need to match expectations to resources. "Funds are an important resource but not the most important. The key resource is human resource.” Emphasizing the need to assess its paid and volunteer forces (Shroff has funded paid employees from his personal kitty, Limathwalla said), he noted that volunteers were the stumbling block: "There are committees and subcommittees but the delivery? The implementation? We need to make an honest assessment of the volunteer force at our disposal in terms of time commitment and ability to deliver. Then we won’t go wrong. The Bohri community holds trade fairs. But we need to plan projects within the reach of our human and financial resources.” Noting that one cannot feed a child who is not hungry, Limathwalla stated, "We need to find out what is the need in the community regarding entrepreneurship” and suggested that delegates attending the global WZCC AGM in Houston in December tie up business opportunities in the US at the same time.

President of the Poona chapter Adi Engineer stated that he holds a WZCC meeting there every alternate Monday whether four or 40 persons attend. Allowing for the hectic pace of life today and the time constraints faced by people, he noted that the real work of the organization is in identifying potential young entrepreneurs and learning their requirements. According to him what drives people into entrepreneurship could be ambition and/or adversity. "But for success the entrepreneur needs temerity and steadfastness. The community has become too cozy. We need to rekindle its drive and initiative,” said Engineer and suggested that elders in the family be motivated to inculcate enterprise and desire for excellence in their young. A former Tata employee has started a Chinese restaurant in Poona with a loan of 30 lakh rupees from the Punchayet, Engineer informed the gathering. He was anxious that the community’s reputation for ethics and integrity — evident even in the house journals of concerns like Thermax and Forbes Marshall — be fostered and continued by the young people who set up in business.

The AGMs of the Bombay chapter and of WZCC-I were held in that order. The morning’s compere Zarine Commissariat informed the gathering that WZCC-I technical director Yazdi Tantra had arranged a webcast of the proceedings which could be heard by people elsewhere who were logged online, among whom were WZCC fountainhead Rohinton Rivetna of Chicago and Sorab Choksi and Veraf Deboo, both of Poona.

Dheeraj Gupta and (center) Minoo Jokhi; Dr N. H. Atthreya

The Bombay AGM ratified the appointment of Pheroze Kharas as president and Hosi Charna as treasurer. The two had taken over from Edil Katrak and Zarir Bhathena, respectively, who had had to resign midterm for personal reasons. Honorary secretary Vispy Mistry recalled the three most significant events held under the Chapter’s banner in the course of the year: A full day business cell seminar at Nehru Centre when three franchisors — Pradeep Verma of Eureka Forbes, Ramesh Padekar from Crestcom International Limited and Suresh Shastry from Reliance World — spoke of opportunities offered by their respective organizations. The second big event was the visit of a 16-member trade delegation to Karachi where a formal memorandum of understanding was signed between WZCC-I and the Karachi Chamber of Commerce. The Bombay Chapter has also begun sending delegates to the Entrepreneur Development Institute in Ahmedabad with the help of members Dolly Dhamodiwalla, Tantra and Prof Faredoon Kapadia.

Farrokh Rustomji, honorary secretary of WZCC-I, recounted the highlights of events over the past year, specifically in the active Bombay and Poona chapters. The global WZCC AGM held in the spacious auditorium of the Ruby Hall Hospital in Poona in early January together with a visit to the Tata Motors factory en route, were particularly memorable, he said. In Delhi, Cyrus Engineer of Industrial Boilers has taken over as president. The new committee which includes founder president Dadi Mistry, honorary secretary Veera Mavalwala, honorary treasurer Adi Chhoi and members at large Adil Nargolwala, Kaenaz Engineer, Mehr­nosh Shapoorji, Navroze Dhondy, Percy Batliwala and Meenakshi Bhujwala is working towards reviving the Delhi Chapter, noted Rustomji. Its first meeting at the DLF City Club, Gurgaon, netted a full house, he added.

WZCC-I honorary treasurer Kersi Commissariat noted that as the organization was registered with various statutory bodies, its accounts needed to be audited. He congratulated the Poona Chapter for being the first to submit audited accounts, as also Bombay. Delhi’s accounts were received only four days ago while what was received from Ahmedabad on the eve of this AGM was both unaudited and incomplete, said Commissariat. With his accounts being thus only "95 percent complete and yet to be audited,” Commissariat presented two options to the members: to reconvene after a couple of weeks or to pass the accounts subject to audit. The members agreed to the latter option.

If "enthusiasm is the baking powder” of entrepreneurship, as Shroff said, perseverance from its support group will provide the warmth to make it rise.