Kanan Shah – Dutch Uncles

The Desi Burger Man and his Entrepreneurial journey

Kanan Shah — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 13:18:00 +0000

A true entrepreneur is the one who can cascade the real-life learnings to aspiring and budding entrepreneurs. With this objective, Dutch Uncles started a new LIVE series – Innerview, Only the Paranoid Survive. This talk show hosts successful entrepreneurs who share their personal stories of diving into the business world and challenging themselves to encounter success.

In the Episode “The Desi Burger Man and his Entrepreneurial Journey,” Rajat Jaiswal, Co-founder, Wat-A-Burger, vividly talks about instances, anecdotes and strategies which led to the success of a bootstrapped startup.

Wat-A-Burger Can Do

As soon as the flight lands, the pilot dons his armour of business skills bringing a fresh new flavour of Indie-Burgers. How did the man behind Wat-A-Burger spurred the QSR industry with his aeronautical skills?

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

What convinced you to choose the idea of ‘Burger’ as a business start-up?

If you look at every industry, the food industry amongst them is the safest precisely because it’s one of the industries which is running in every scenario. When somebody is happy, they will go out to eat. When somebody is sad, they will go out to eat to cheer them up. If they have some celebration, they will go to a restaurant and celebrate so the food industry remains versatile even in the grimace of circumstances.

My idea was that I can lean into the food segment but what food segment was the main question. I realised that Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) has a lot of scope. Back in 2015-16, when we actually started this venture, QSR was rapidly growing. The pace was almost 30-35% an year but of that, burgers and sandwiches happened to be just about 2-3%.

Burgers were always seen as not a mainstream food but just a sidekick snack for a general Indian clientele. That was precisely because they would not have Indian Flavours in them. They would not connect mayonnaise, bun and patty as something they can have for dinner or lunch and this was something that we wanted to change.

At Wat-A-Burger we started making recipes which were Indian flavours fused inside a burger. So, when a person takes a bite, it is filling the stomach. It is also filling his appetite for the food that he wanted to have. Moreover, it was easy to scale.

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Burgers were always seen as not a mainstream food but just a sidekick snack for a general Indian clientele.

How was the response from your first set of customers?

When we started off, this was not a very famous brand. It was just a start-up and we had a shop which was just across the road to a very famous western burger joint. It wasn’t that he wanted to go head-on with them but there was a very simple ideology:

We already have people who are interested in eating a burger around. We just have to pull them to our store, so the task becomes half easy.

We did some marketing trials known as a ‘Burger Trial’. We would slice a burger into four halves, put some toothpicks around and ask our team to stand outside making people, who are walking around, to taste them. The simple offer was – if you like it, you come to the store and order. If you still don’t like your meal with what you have ordered, it is absolutely free and on the house.We ran this campaign for almost 4 months and there was not even one bill that was asked to be reimbursed!

It was an extreme hit and now you see that even some of the major brands are now making their focus towards shifting the basic taste and feel of a burger or a western food into an Indian flavour-based product. So we did that well in time and we did that much ahead of everybody else in the market.

In your journey, from ideation to a successful brand, what were the challenges?

Setting up a restaurant has its own set of challenges including setting up the manpower, handling your capacity, handling your quality, maintaining consistency in your products and product delivery, managing the brand, making it famous. However, when you are making something which is to be scaled to a brand like Wat-A-Burger, there are other problems also at hand such as brand adaptation or acceptance of the product as a brand.

We started with one store. From one store to a level where it is seen as a brand was a big walk. Our biggest hurdle was how to do this.

Our primary mode of expansion has been franchising. You select the person who’s fit to run a restaurant, who are of the same ideology, who love food, who want to run their own places. They have to perceive your product as prime and supreme as something which is a brand. This was challenging.

With just one or two outlets, when you start franchising, the first question people ask you is: Is this a brand? Or Can you actually scale to 100 restaurants? That question has to be answered. So, every single deal that we cracked, every single contract that we signed, every single product that we had on board was all done with the concept of 100 clusters.

We had that vision when we started – five years ago. Gradually, as we started growing, post 8 – 10 stores, that vision started turning into a reality.

Audience Asks

Any plans to venture outside India?

Yes, of course. A friend of mine who also happens to be a pilot and entrepreneur is running a successful chain of hotels in London. We are planning to set up a store together in Scotland and that will be the first Wat-A-Burger store outside India.

We already have a supply chain system where we can make a provision to supply all the unique sauces that Wat-A-Burger uses, to any country outside. We have a setup to replicate our recipes outside, starting from beverages to burgers, to wraps, to sandwiches, to everything.

UK being the first country, we want to enter parts of Scotland, and also, Australia is on the cards. We’re talking to somebody for the master franchisor and some parts of UAE and Qatar also on the books.

How much dependency should a business have on technology?

Well, see technology is efficiently replacing manpower requirements to some extent. At the same time, you should not completely rely on it for replacing your manpower, because a human element asset is something which your machine will never (or a lot of leap years ahead) be able to replace.

Considering Wat-A-Burger, technology has really taken a good show. We’ve replaced a lot of quality checks and area manager teams through technology. We are now using the SAAS base checklist through a platform where all the store opening and closing checklists are done digitally. These are processes which were done earlier through messaging apps, like WhatsApp, getting pictures from the store, calling up stores, doing it manually. So, technology is really taking up even simpler tasks like billing, the POS systems have been redesigning that and are making it more efficient.

We’ve just moved to a QR code-based ordering system, where we will have in-car dining, a modular drive through or I would say a virtual drive through. All of this is really helping a business scale up. My costs are very much controlled compared to what I would have to spend if I did not have the use of technology.

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Technology is really taking up even simpler tasks like billing, the POS systems have been redesigning that and are making it more efficient.

Watch the Full Episode

This Episode of Innerview, featuring Rajat Jaiswal, Co-founder, Wat-A-Burger, was virtually attended by viewers across YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. From aspiring entrepreneurs, small business owners, restaurant owners to entrepreneurs from the Food and Beverage Industry, many business enthusiasts attended the LIVE show.

A video guide for bootstrapping your business, managing a robust supply chain, adopting sure-shot revival strategies and business approach, this talk show reveals several keys to business success.

Transcription by: Chetna Gupta

The post The Desi Burger Man and his Entrepreneurial journey appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Scale Your Business: Adopting The CENTS Framework

Kanan Shah — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 16:35:04 +0000

“No point in chasing money. The moment you start chasing money, money will start eluding you,” says Sameer Kaul, Entrepreneur, Market Leader and a Speaker to a virtual audience of startup entrepreneurs and small business owners. A 30-minute LIVE workshop on “Scale your business” was conducted by Dutch Uncles as a part of its ongoing workshop series – MentorED. This session was virtually attended by business enthusiasts on YouTube, LinkedIN, Facebook and Twitter with the intent to learn from the industry expert about how to scale up their businesses.

An award-winning management professional, Sameer Kaul has been acknowledged for launching, building, scaling and transforming many leading brands in India across sectors such as retail, FMCG, hospitality and healthcare. He was instrumental in launching the brand Windshield Experts in India from scratch to around 25 cities, transforming a small lab business, Dr Lal Path Labs into a national consumer brand. He has worked across Australia, India, USA with Boards of topmost companies. His 25 years of stint includes Oberoi Group of Hotels, VJT, Asahi Glass, Metropolis and Private Equity companies.

A Practical Perspective

In this workshop, the mentor put forth a perspective that every entrepreneur should adopt. He emphasized on:

Practical ways of looking at scaling up
Practical ways of looking at growth
Whether growth itself is required
Whether growth is a good thing for my business
What are the commandments of scaling up
What is the framework?
What do you look at when you’re scaling up?

To Scale, or Not To, That is the Question

Observing some entrepreneurs, Sameer Kaul points out an error in their strategy. “Sometimes out of nostalgia, we like that we should have 10 employees, 50 employees or even 100 employees in our company. But whether bigger denotes success is the moot point. Whether bigger is a destination or whether bigger is a strategic intent of a company is what one should analyse first.”

Kaul identifies two issues in the minds of business owners while processing a growth strategy. “A lot of times, owners of businesses or small businesses who have moved from zero to one, or zero to five, but would like to scale from five to 10, or five to 50 are always embroiled in this kind of a trade-off: whether they should grow or not.

They’re always in that kind of a dilemma. Sometimes it is to satisfy the ego of the business owner himself, other times it is out of competition or out of one upmanship that ‘we want to scale up the business or we want to grow the business.’ So, the first thing to understand is that bigger is not always better.”

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There is nothing called luck in business. But there are ways of becoming lucky in business.

Scaling Up is Always a Right Option: Bursting the Myth

Elaborating with a powerful example, Kaul says, “If Harvard Business School or if Oxford University were to open 100 campuses all across the world, recruit 1000s of teachers, 1000s of professors, would their quality be better? Would they do a better job? Definitely not.

Why is scaling up not a right option for Harvard Business School?

The mentor explains the shortcomings of plans to scale: The focus on quality, the focus on exclusivity, to focus on building a brand gets diluted.

“In certain businesses, in certain business situations, bigger makes sense. But in all businesses bigger may not be the right strategy for a company. So that’s the first myth I wanted to burst,” he states. Once this perspective is set straight, entrepreneurs can take the right decision, identify the right time and the right plan to scale.

How to Structure the Right Scaling Strategy for Your Business

Kaul affirms that the purpose of business is to scale. The purpose of business is to grow. But the parameters vary for each business.

“A size which is right for one company may not be the size which is right for some other company. Sometimes we have even heard big businesses saying that they always wanted to be more flexible,” he adds.

Have an opportunistic mindset

“The first thing of a business when they’re scaling up is to have an opportunity mindset.” Entrepreneurship is a learning process. The mentor guides that all business owners must “start learning to get lucky. There is nothing called luck in business. But there are ways of becoming lucky in business. And that’s a mindset, an opportunistic mindset.

First is to create the conditions, the groundwork or the platform for attracting opportunities to you.

Second is to spot those opportunities.

Third is to assess the opportunity. Just because there’s an opportunity, it doesn’t mean that’s the right opportunity for you.

Five Commandments: The Litmus Test to Scale Up

One should start small, but should always envision the growth from the very beginning. That’s the quality of a visionary entrepreneur. In the MentorED workshop, Sameer Kaul shares a very insightful framework: The CENTS Framework. It acts as a litmus test to scale up a business.

The CENTS Framework consists of 5 Commandments:

C – Commandment of Control

E – Commandment of Entry

N – Commandment of Need

T – Commandment of Time

S – Commandment of Scale

Commandment of Control

Sameer Kaul explains, “If you are a business owner, you want to be on the driver’s seat all the time. You cannot be a hitchhiker. You have to have control over the revenues, over the strategy of the company and over the whole business plan.”

“You shouldn’t be diluting your equity, you should be calling the shots, whether it is talent or whether it is strategy. Raising money is not about growth. Having control over the business is the first thing that a lot of promoters and a lot of entrepreneurs are losing out these days. So, the first commandment of scaling up which you have to build from the design stage is to have control.”

Commandment of Entry

“The commandment of entry talks about building a business that gives you some core competency. Either it is through your proprietary technology, or either it gives you economies of scale, as you grow,” the mentor explains.

Commandment of Need

It’s high time to adopt the new school mindset. “It talks about an outside-inside perspective which is called a customer-based business strategy.” Kaul explains, “You have to look at your customers, you have to look at the needs:

What needs are unmet in the market.

What needs a funnel?

In the market, is there a service gap?

Is there a pain point which is not getting addressed?

Is there an emotional disconnect?

Sameer Kaul asks all entrepreneurs to look at these perspectives and then start working on those.

Commandment of Time

Time should be in your control. Elaborating on the importance of this commandment, the mentor states, “If you are spending all the time in your business, you will not be able to scale it up. Then you have found yourself a job but you’re masquerading as an entrepreneur. That’s a different mindset.”

“We see a lot of these retailers, shopkeepers who are 90% involved in their business. That is why they build the business so dependent on them that they are not able to scale. Because they are not able to delegate or because they are not able to trust, they become small business people who can, at the most, run one shop but they cannot expand. If you want to expand you need to have control over your time. In fact, as they say, you should be able to make money while you sleep. A good business has to be a good business system.”

Commandment of Scale

Scalability is measured with two parameters:

Reach

Reach refers to the number of units sold

Magnitude

Magnitude refers to the unit profitability

“If you want to scale, you need to have both reach and magnitude. It is very important not to get a false sense of scale,” he warns.

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If you are spending all the time in your business, you will not be able to scale it up. Then you have found yourself a job but you're masquerading as an entrepreneur.

Expert Advice to the Attendees

In the workshop, Sameer Kaul also shared a strategic framework called a CN framework. The 30-minute workshop was followed by an interactive Q&A session. Many questions poured in including asking advice on identifying customer needs, understanding control in business, creating the right balance in equity and funding and climbing up the different stages of business scaling.

The post Scale Your Business: Adopting The CENTS Framework appeared first on Dutch Uncles.