NEW ENTERPRISE

&

INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

ASSIGNMENT

SUBMITTED TO - PROF.BHAVESH PARMAR

SUBMITTED BY-

AXAY PATEL

JAIMIN NAYI

GOVIND SATHWARA

KISHAN PATEL

BATCH: 2012-14 MBA SEMESTER III

Health is wealth Cyrus Driver (PGP 2000), Calorie Care

one piece of advice almost all the entrepreneurs of the earlier generation had for today's dreamers is: ‘Don't join a cushy job with a big brand name company. You won't learn much there, and you'll probably get addicted to the creature comforts’.

Cyrus worked with J P Morgan in Singapore before returning to India in 2004 to set up the unique concept of ‘Calorie Care’. It had been a success but like all early successes the company faces the difficult task of scaling up from here.

Cyrus Driver is an Air Force child. Everyone went the doctor-engineer route, and so did Cyrus. He joined IIT Bombay. But much before that, as India was opening up in the 1990s. Cyrus found himself fascinated by business and big businessmen. “I felt these are the real ‘rock stars’ and knew I wanted to do something of my own early on.”

With this in mind, Cyrus joined IIM Ahmedabad and that's also the reason he joined J P Morgan in their private equity division. He figured it would be a great ‘learning ground’, and it was.

“I worked in both India and Singapore, from where we invested in a lot of promising young Indian companies.” The work included everything from hiring salespeople for investee companies, to looking into finances. It was the dotcom era when a lot of companies launched with Rs 5-10 crore advertising budgets. And fizzled out quickly as well.

“I learnt the importance of starting small and growing big. “And I knew my company should be built the bootstrapped way.”

In August 2004, Cyrus quit J P Morgan and came back to Mumbai.He had a nest egg to invest and also an idea to invest in: Calorie counted healthy meals. “I've always had a weight problem of sorts but after I started working it became worse. I knew there was definitely a demand for such a service because I myself had a need for it.”

Secondly, it was a good opportunity to be an early mover in a growing space. And thus was born Calorie Care.

The first step was constituting the product. Recipes which were low in calories but tasted good as well. Sports nutritionist Lisa John worked along with two professional chefs to create a library of calorie counted recipes. It took 10 months to put together a database of 150 such recipes across different cuisines. Everything from masala baked beans in tomato cups to grilled hara bhara (soya) kebabs.

“Downloading a list of low-cal recipes would take 60 minutes on the internet as there are thousands available online.” says Cyrus. “The reason it took almost a year is because we actually cooked and tried out literally a thousand recipes and modified them by trial and error to come up with 150 that we thought were tasty as well as healthy”.

The next hurdle was getting the sundry municipal licenses required to set up a food establishment in Mumbai. “There is so much corruption! For the first time I came face to face with this whole different world.”

Finding a location to set up his kitchen was also not easy. It took 5 months to zero in on a property which met the requirements and was affordable.

Next came the task of setting up a professional kitchen and this is what required a sizable investment (Rs 45 lakhs, put in by Cyrus himself).

This is certainly an achievement but also an issue. How much more can a premium service grow, and that too only on word of mouth? Currently Calorie Care delivers 600 meals a day, and caters generic ‘healthy meals’ to some corporate houses. The company clocked sales of approximately Rs 2 crores in its second year and some profit - which was reinvested in the business. The issue is: where does the company go from here?

Calorie Care entered into a joint venture with Sterling Biotech, a company launching ‘health malls’. The company also runs health food cafes at select gyms in Mumbai. “We had ambitious plans of launching in Delhi and Bangalore, which we've dropped for now. The problem is finding and retaining senior managers. We are finding that extremely difficult.”

“I am in talks with a couple of strategic partners.This would mean parting with a large chunk of equity but I think we will get much in return.”

QUESTION OR ADVISE TO ENTERPRENIURS:-

This is a good time to start up but keep in mind, the odds will be against you.You must carefully plan how you will be financially sustainable. Create a nest egg to draw on or, like me make sure you have some alternate source of income. The other option is to set up after 10-15 years when you are an industry expert. Start small and then expand, after you feel you have the product and processes right.

It's good to be a consumer of the product you are planning to launch, as you don't need to do endless market research.You know what will sell.

THE OPPORTUNISTS:-

These entrepreneurs did not plan to take this path but when opportunity knocked they seized it. Their stories go to show that you don't have to be 'born with it', you can develop an entrepreneurial bent of mind at any age.