An in-depth interview with corporate leader turned entrepreneur Venkat Rajendran who aims to become the ‘McDonalds’ of South India with his string of popular restaurant chains and his enterprising wife Chandra, who creates exclusive Sakhi sarees
Entrepreneurship came quite late in the life of R Venkat Rajendran, after having built up a career as an engineer for three decades before launching out on his own in 1994. Venkat, then having entered his 40s, co-founded Deccanet Designs Ltd, a telecom technology company that worked for big-name clients like Motorola, Intel and Siemens. Ten years down the line, he sold Deccanet to the US-headquartered supply-chain solutions company Logistics Flextronics, now a US$25-billion giant, then stayed on to head Flextronics Design operations in India and China for a couple of years A serial entrepreneur, he is now involved in a number of new start-ups in the technology, retail and social domains.
Twelve years later, Venkat founded a holding company for most of his new ventures - Billionways Consultancy Pvt. Ltd, of which he is the Chairman and CEO. He and his son Vijay Abhimanyu now run a chain of fine-dining and quick-service restaurants (QSRs) specialising in cuisine from the four South Indian states.
Chandra, who was a housewife and mother when she and Venkat lived in Delhi, used to embroider her own cotton saris to make them more attractive. “Friends began asking me where I got this distinctive wear from, and asked me to make similar things for them, ” she says. “I started doing that in 1992, still as a hobby that I indulged in during my free time when my children were at school.” The family moved to Bengaluru, and she continued to do what she loved. It was only then that she began to explore opportunities to work with local weavers to get the six-yard drape made according to her own designs. “I never studied textile designing, I’m totally self-taught,” she says. “And I soon found that some of my designs couldn’t be executed by weaving alone, so I started using other means to get the result I wanted. Creating one sari often took me as long as three months—but there was no pressure so I worked at my own pace.”
Her daughter Neeta, then still a student, used to help her mother, painting designs on the sarees. “I liked doing that—and I earned pocket money with Amma paying me like her other job-workers!” she says. After doing a B E like her father and interning in his telecommunications firm, she found the work uninteresting; so she decided to go into business. Venkat told her to set up her own boutique—which she did from scratch, right from getting a licence to handling sales and computer coding, figuring out and executing operations, the point-of-sale strategy and so on. Mother and daughter now run the designer saree chain Sakhi, which was born in 2004.
Venkat, who graduated in Electronics and Communications Engineering from The Madras Institute of Technology (now part of Anna University) in Chennai, landed a job at the Electronics & Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) of DRDO (Defence Research & Development Organisation) in Bengaluru. He then moved to the prestigious Telecom Research Centre (TRC), a telecom research and development organisation set up by the Government of India, as a Deputy Director and worked on designing telecommunications switching systems.
At a young age, he became head of software design, joining a handful of engineers globally who have built a high-availability ‘carrier class’ central office switching system from scratch. “This system successfully delivered the largest real-time embedded product designed in India,” he says proudly. “When Sam Pitroda assembled a small group, the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT), under former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s directive to kick start telecom research in India, I was part of the core team that started India’s telecom revolution. I was responsible for building the Fault Tolerance system in C-DoT’s family of central office switches.”
It was a good 30 years before the business bug bit, and Venkat turned entrepreneur—launching Deccanet and moving on to sell it. Now, with son Vijay Abhimanyu R, 28, he runs a chain of fine-dining and quick-service restaurants specialising in South Indian cuisine. “I hail from a family that has traditionally been in the food business,” he explains. “Naturally that’s what I gravitated towards. I believe there is a great opportunity to get into this sector which caters to the middle classes: it is currently totally unorganised.” With a keen interest in China, where he spent a lot of time as part of the acquisition of Deccanet by Flextronics, Venkat believes: “There is excellent scope for combining national strengths. I pursue this with vigour, and I am involved in a few new technology ventures in China, too. I was also influenced by what I saw in China: the booming restaurants sector. Back in India, this was running in the back of his head, and the idea of building a McDonalds of South Indian cuisine seemed very attractive. “I realised that if we didn’t do it soon, we would all end up eating McDosa,” he exclaims. Having got Billionsmiles going, his interests include Building Entrepreneurship, building a good eco-system for Entrepreneurship and Indian Rural Education. Beginning in Bengaluru, the restaurants have quickly spread to other southern states and have begun a steady march towards the north and the west too. The first of these genres, branded South Indies and Born South, are aimed at the upmarket consumer, while UpSouth is the future, he says. With Vijay at the helm, leading what he calls “a young and hungry team”, the aim is to build up Billionways into a one-billion-dollar business in five years Between father and son, the aim is to bring a billion smiles to faces across India with their BillionSmiles Hospitality, the holding company for the restaurants.
Says Venkat: “We will stick to small, modest self-service outlets which have no frills like air-conditioning. This makes it easier to add numbers and, therefore, return on investment.” UpSouth has learnt from the successful QSRs in the West, and is looking at becoming what Venkat describes as the ‘McDonald’s of south India’. A lot of research has gone into the positioning of the chain, which has a stylised knife and fork as its logo, it offers only south Indian food—which, he points out, is popular across India. This is true for everything from vadas to the multiple varieties of dose, all day: right from seven or eight in the morning to 11 at night. Chinese and Italian food come next, while north Indian cuisine finishes a poor fourth.
Vijay, who was Venkat’s ‘cheer leader’ at age 17 and is now Managing Director of Billionsmiles Hospitality, points out that in keeping with this popular taste, 80 per cent of the menu at UpSouth is ‘classic’: the usual dosas, idlis, vadas and the like. The remaining 20 per cent , however, is made up of innovative dishes, like a ‘Malabari parota sandwich’ or a ‘Sabudana cheesa vada’ as well as various breakfast and meal combos. “We started these as experiment, to see if the customers like it—they do, especially the young crowd,” he says. “The elanir (coconut water) mousse is a huge success, too!”
“If both of you have a very similar view of life, you are lucky. But as you grow older, the finer cracks show. The different views show up. Learn to respect them and enjoy” —Chandra
The model is to supply the outlets twice a day from a central kitchen, while live cooking is also done for items like dosas. Everything is duly certified according to HACCP and other standards. With ten outlets already in operation and plans to raise the number to 200 in five years, Venkat sees revenues rising to Rs. 1,000 crore very easily. “We are priced at the middle of the pyramid, which makes us one of the most competitive, ” he says.
True to his engineering and infotech background, he has also used technology a lot, with a menu displayed TV monitor so that it can be changed centrally, and a vibrating device that is given to a customer when he or she orders at the counter, to signal when the food is ready. For home deliveries, they worked for two years to create the right type of packaging, using a plastic lining inside the cardboard carton so that nothing spills. They are now working on a recyclable container. “We have lots of that business,” Vijay points out. “Many of it is for repeat customers – we planned our catchment area very well.” The plan now is to set up a call centre to cover the whole city.
“I am happy that I became an entrepreneur and then a serial entrepreneur and later still am able to mentor my children and others as entrepreneurs. With humility, I accept this as a great responsibility that has come to me. My life is centred around this role“ —Venkat
With the high customer focus that is necessary to run a food business, UpSouth has a professional CEO and a team of people with experience in multi-national corporations. “We decided to have professional and not proprietary management to ensure consistency – Vijay is the only family person in the business,” Venkat explains. Adds Vijay: “We are very passionate about the customer experience.” And corporatisation is the only way to go: India has only three food companies that are listed on the stock markets, against 300 in the US.
Billionsmiles is looking at expanding through franchisees, especially for the fine dining brands, but is also talking to some major private equity funds to raise more money for its expansion plans. “UpSouth, however, will be primarily on the own-store model with, maybe, a limited franchise component,” Venkat says.
“But our entrepreneurial journey actually started with Chandra!” he grins. “Way back in the 1980s, when I was with C-DoT in Delhi, she used to go shopping to LR Market (Lajpat Rai Market in the Chandni Chowk area of old Delhi) or somewhere, and buy stuff to take home to relatives and friends back home in Tirunelveli.” Adds his wife: “Every time we went, the people there would be waiting eagerly for me – or more, for the beds heets, chappals, handbags and handmade items I would take as presents for them.” Chips in an obviously admiring husband: “She has lots of skills in creativity, her sourcing is excellent, and her vendor management is superb: her vendors actually worship her!” What Chandra began grew into a full-fledged family of entrepreneurs: “Both of us, our son and daughter, and even our nephew, are all first-generation entrepreneurs,” Venkat points out. “When I myself became an entrepreneur, her hobby was in full swing.”
And no, Venkat didn’t push either her or their son or daughter into entrepreneurship: everything just happened, falling into place as they moved on. “In fact, it was a friend who convinced Neeta to start her own her thing,” Chandra says. “And when I was trying to convince her, Vijay came to me and convinced me to join her. With both of them having finished their studies and doing their own things, I had no longer the responsibility of staying at home to look after them – so I began helping with Sakhi.”
Agrees Venkat : “Both were ready to take on their own problems. Vijay, who was grounded when he was only 17, got a good grasp of a lot of things that I had learnt only when I was 40 years old. Today, when they are entering their 30s, they know a lot more than we did at their age! I had no clue what I wanted to do after passing out of college, but they know exactly what they want.”
Describing the first 10 years as “a struggle before I could achieve a turnaround in the business”, he continues to be involved in everything the youngsters do. “I have stayed a co-owner, being both mentor and tormentor. But in another five years or so, I will move to the role of a mere advisor.”
“It requires mastery of an ancient craft form which means drawing with a pen. We empower these craftspersons by working with them—they don’t need charity. This way, with enough returns, the younger generation is also enthused to take up the craft, and won’t let it die. India is the only country in the world that can boast of such a rich variety of handicrafts” — Chandra
Venkat is, in his own words, “keenly interested in building and nurturing young entrepreneurships”. He says, “I believe strongly that people’s entrepreneurial spirit has great potential to build wealth and solve problems for the community. To bolster this, I build, participate in and advise a number of start-up ventures. And I hold significant stakes in most of them. For example, I helped my nephew Arun also to start a business. I take on a fair part of the operational problems of all of them. I am also a mentor for Nirmalabs, an incubator set up by Nirma University of Management at Ahmedabad, and on the board of directors of GVFL Trustee Company - which is the pioneering venture fund in India.”
Chandra’s and Neeta’s business has made waves in Bengaluru and globally with the exclusive designs it offers for designer sarees. In 10 years, Sakhi has grown to 50 people and four stores including one in Hyderabad. Even though her business is officially a venture of her father’s Billionways group, Neeta stuck to her resolve not to take the easy way out by asking him for help, but focussed on making money from Day-one so that she wouldn’t be a drain on him “He could have easily given me everything I wanted, and made my path smooth. I really appreciate that he didn’t – doing all the jobs from watchman to director was a great learning experience. It was the most fun I have ever had!” She even went to the National Institute of Fashion Design (NIFT) to hone the skills she had acquired from helping her mother. “Way back, I had no intention of making it commercial,” she says. “It was just something I did.”
That business has been profitable from the first year on. Today, the store also has a major online presence, with its website www.fashions.com. “India has 60 million Internet users, a number that is growing every day. This includes a significant number of net-savvy women,” Neeta explains. Sakhi has ensured that its online venture recreates the boutique experience to the very last detail, with key factors like magnified view to make the online experience very real; details like craft, fabric and care are also included in the website. The online store is a boon to net savvy customers who aim at having a boutique like experience in the virtual world.
“Setting up our own website was a big initiative at that time, because e-commerce was not yet hot then; the dot-com bust also happened. But we believed it was coming,” Neeta says. Today, the online business accounts for about Rs. 5 crore out of Sakhi’s total business of around Rs. 13 crore. Much of this is from exports, mainly to customers of Indian origin all over the world. Many buyers abroad pick a couple of designs and send the details to their relatives or friends in Bengaluru, who come to one of the stores with a note of these and want to see only those saris so that they can give their feedback along with their own photographs. “However detailed the photographs and descriptions on our, actual sight, touch and feel are very important,” she explains. “We have the lowest return rate among e-com buyers, less than 1 per cent, though we offer the additional facility of pulling products back even from the US at our own cost if the customer is not satisfied.”
Earlier, when the Bengaluru airport was in the heart of the city, NRIs returning after a visit to the city would reserve a couple of hours to drop in and shop at the Indira Nagar store. “Now, we have opened a small one in Sadashivnagar so that they can make a small detour on their way to the new airport,” says Chandra.
Adds Neeta : “Advertising – mainly in Femina, which many women all over India and abroad follow-is ‘very different’ and arouses potential customers’ curiosity. Rather than leaving it all to an agency, I am personally involved in every photo shoot.”
Sakhi also offers a personalised end-to-end service, with a blouse and petticoat- all created in-house. With delivery periods as short as four to seven days even to the US against the norm of 30 days, this is a ‘fantastic’ advantage, the mother and daughter duo points out. “We take an order only if we have the stock-so there is no waiting period while we source it. And we do the customisation in record time.”
Chandra and Neeta work a lot with silk now: tussar silk, which is Chandra’s ‘first love’, and Kanchivaram. They are now looking at khadi, because they plan to get into readymade garments like kurtis for a younger audience. The traditional dastkar work of Andhra Pradesh goes well with khadi, especially a specially fabricated material with mercerised cotton. “We don’t chase fashion trends, we work the other way!” Neeta adds. They also go to the silk sari capital Kanchivaram every month, where Chandra sits with the weavers to explain her designs to them.
“I never studied textile designing, I’m totally self-taught. And I soon found that some of my designs couldn’t be executed by weaving alone, so I started using other means to get the result I wanted. Creating one sari often took me as long as three months - but there was no pressure so I worked at my own pace” —Chandra
Along the way, Sakhi also held a mini craft mela at Sakhi to show people how much work and attention go into the masterpieces that these artists create. “People got the answer here to the often- asked question of why a Kalamkari sari costs Rs. 8,000,” Chandra points out. “It requires mastery of an ancient craft form which means drawing with a pen. We empower these craftspersons by working with them -they don’t need charity. This way, with enough returns, the younger generation is also enthused to take up the craft, and won’t let it die. India is the only country in the world that can boast of such a rich variety of handicrafts!”
One of their new designs is a ‘concept Kajeevaram—‘the queen of silk’, she calls it—with a broad velvet border. The aim is to continuously reinvent and contemporise the sari so that it stays relevant for years to come. They use a variety of mix-and-match fabrics: like Korvai saris where the body of the sari is pure handloom cotton and the border is pure silk; concept saris like partly pallu in which the pleats, pallu and blouse are in contrast with the rest of the sari; rising concept, wherein the sari is diagonally divided and shows a gradual play of colour when draped; different kinds of half-and-half, with the top half of the sari in complete contrast with the bottom half and both halves in contrast with the pallu and blouse; or symmetric saris which can be worn either way, creating a new look and complemented by two unique blouses.
Besides saris, Sakhi also offers salwar-kameez sets, which combine excellent materials like Kanchivaram, chiffon, cotton, crepe, georgette, lace, matka, net, organza, and tussar with traditional crafts such as applique, badla, chamki (sequins), cut work, embroidery, hand block print, Kalamkari, Kundan work, mirror work and others in a glorious melange of colours and designs. It also has a matching set of accessories carefully chosen to go with the saris and salwar-kameezes, making the ensemble complete.
The latest innovation from the Sakhi line is the Insta sari, a ready-made garment with a concealed zip that does away with the drudgery of draping a sari and worrying about it slipping down if it’s not anchored firmly. A onepiece constructed unit with a blouse attached, this can be custom made to each customer’s measurement in addition to standard sizes. The collection is crafted using fine quality materials like Lycra blended silk, French lace and flowing net contrasted by brocades and glamorous sequin as highlight. The Insta sari wraps snugly around the body. “It takes 60 seconds to get into, against 120 seconds to make instant coffee!” she claims. “It’s great for foreigners, even 20-40-year-old Indians.” Neeta herself, who fits into the middle of that age group, is as comfortable wearing a sari as her mother is: “I can drape it blindfolded!” she grins.
Says Chandra : “At Sakhi we strive for our clients to stand out from the rest… We try and create a unique style every season - question the ordinary and explore the beautiful Indian sari in texture and treatment.” Together, the mother and daughter have combined their energies to weave the Sakhi story and build it into a brand that stands for the traditional Indian sari in the mind of the modern woman– the “real woman of today, confident of herself, fully engaged in life, playing varied roles as professional, wife, entrepreneur, home maker, executive, mother, designer, artist and many more”, as their Website describes her. “She makes all our lives vibrant and beautiful. We help her live her true values. We admire her. We love her. We salute her. Sakhi is committed to celebrate this modern woman by bringing out her personality, confidence, beauty and elegance, and has a single profound mission– to make the modern woman look and feel great.”
So what, in Venkat and Chandra’s experience, is it that keeps a marriage going? What has kept theirs together? “Marriage is a long friendship,” he replies. “As someone said, it is not necessarily a perfect couple having a perfect relationship, it is two imperfect people learning to enjoy their differences. We know our strengths. But more importantly we know our ‘imperfections’ and learn to enjoy them too.”
Their advice to young couples today is to learn to celebrate the different views of life. Says she: “If both of you have a very similar view of life, you are lucky. But as you grow older, the finer cracks show. The different views show up. Learn to respect them and enjoy.” Learning to accept differences in culture and upbringing also play a big role. Vijay, for instance, is marrying Parsi girl, whom he brought home to meet his parents and make sure she fit in, that his mother would like her. “I do like her,” Chandra says.
“Marriage is a long friendship. As someone said, it is not necessarily a perfect couple having a perfect relationship, it is two imperfect people learning to enjoy their differences. We know our strengths. But more importantly we know our ‘imperfections’ and learn to enjoy them too” —Venkat
And what are their individual philosophies of life, by which they live? Each has a different one: “Being an entrepreneur is like being an engine in a society,” Venkat says. “Some of us get an opportunity to play the role of the engine in the game of life. If you are a successful engine, you generate the energy required to pull a lot of people forward. This is a very important role in any modern society. I am happy that I became an entrepreneur and then a serial entrepreneur and later still am able to mentor my children and others as entrepreneurs. With humility, I accept this as a great responsibility that has come to me. My life is centred around this role.” Chandra, on the other hand, sums up hers in a single sentence: “It is a simple philosophy - do what you are passionate about,” she says.
And now that the government is giving a boost to start-ups, what do they think of entrepreneurship? Is Karnataka an entrepreneur-friendly state? Says Venkat: “India’s GDP share of the world was around 30 per cent in AD 1000. It steadily decayed for 1000 years to become 2.5 per cent by 1980s. We started taking risk. With liberalisation, the boost was given for entrepreneurship in India. A country which forgot how to take risk woke up and started moving up. We now account for about six per cent of World’s GDP and by 2050, most projections show India will be about 15 per cent of world GDP and the second biggest economy - overtaking the US in size. Entrepreneurship is key to achieving this. It is all about taking risk and exploring new worlds. The system has relaxed itself from a command and control mode to allow Indians to explore their inherent entrepreneurial spirit. There is a clear turn around. It is a once-in-a-millennia opportunity. We have come a long way in the past two decades. We are glad that the government has realised this and started playing a helping hand. However, the mind-set across the system has to still change much and it would take some time. India is one of the few countries in the world which has built democracy first before building capitalism. This is a bit of a handicap and slow things down-but is a steady and surer way to grow.” Adds Chandra: “Karnataka, especially Bengaluru, is a great place for entrepreneurship as it attracts a very cosmopolitan crowd and the best talent from across the country.”
Between the two of them, with their children up front and doing all the hard work, they are helping to feed almost everyone, across budgets, and clothe some of them. Good going so far, though Venkat and Vijay have a long way to go to become a McDonald's, which is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast-food restaurants, serving around 68 million customers daily from 35,000 outlets in 119 countries. Chandra and Neeta, of course, have no such ambitions: their target audience is only the well-heeled women who belong to the upper echelons of society.
BY SEKHAR SESHAN
