Venkatesh is a finance guy. He spent the first 15 years of his life as a bean counter in a financial services compaby – from 1989 to 2004. From then on the journey has been from seagull to eagle. What I liked about his talk was that he would keep on signaling the audience to applaud on cue. As he puts it very well in Bombaiya – Taali aayega, sharm jayega..

Surprisingly for a fin guy, his first love seems to be branding. He thinks the strength of a country is in its brands. In that sense, India is a very poor country. His thinking was to create jobs at the bottom of the pyramid. And where else to start, but food. The Indian taste buds don’t react to anything other than spice. Poor Kellogg is taking many decades to find this out. Venkatesh is probably a better raconteur than entrepreneur. Recounting his entpreneurial initial days of financial struggles ‘Agar jeb khaali ho, Kahaani bolna jaroori hai,’ He found his calling in the twins of Wada and Pav – he likes them to refer to the Ram and Shyam jodi. Everyone know of it – in Pune, Mumbai – and maybe parts of Nasik. It is famous, without being widespread. It is fast, mobile, finger food. Made of potato – which has universal appeal – and Besan, which is the Amitabh Bachchan of food. Venkatesh, being the quintessential Mumbai manoos, decided to use the Mumbai lingo to brand his products.

He started in 1990 – and decided to use the franchising model. The agreement was unashamedly copied from the one used by Aptech, a leading computer training institute at that time. There is a central kitchen from where the wadas were dispatched. Only the Golis are supplied to franchisees – they source the pavs locally. The team would start work at 2200 hrs – and dispatches would happen around 0700 hrs. The Golis are fried in fryers at temperatures of 170 to 180 C. Once done, they are stored in Blue Star Deep Freezes at -18C. Wastage is at about 25%, with another 500-800 being pilfered. Technically Venkatesh faced these challenges:

He was lucky to get OSI Vista as a vendor-investor. They are one of the key suppliers to McDonalds.

Goli Wada Pav was launched in his hometown of Mumbai. Venky’s guerilla tactics ensured that the Mumbaikar was aware of Goli through use of low cost tactics. Goli salesmen would visit Mumbai railway stations and get the announcers to include their brand, as children would always get lost somewhere neat the Goli Wada pav stalls. Apart from the usual blogs and Youtube channels, there were even free CDs containing Goli songs. In exchange of free wada-pav, some local Marathi films got the brand included in their film. A hundred stories were built around Goli – and broadcast on local radio FM channels – using a Sachin Tendulkar sounding voice artiste. They later on even hired a Sachin look-alike to visit their stalls – attracting a lot of crowds who thought it was the real master blaster.

Amongst other things Mumbai is a place famous for its sky high real estate rates. In contrast to employees who play a very critical role in an organization of building and sustaining systems, entrepreneurs need to be experts at imagination. One of the landmarks of Mumbai’s footpaths is the Aarey Milk booth – structures that have been granted legal sanctity by the Supreme Court. Venkatesh convinced the Aarey management to get his Wada pav into these booths. There were a few hiccups – BMC did not allow naked flames in these wood booths. Venky got around that by using electric heaters for reheating the Golis. This sudden burst of distribution did not go down well with the local Marathi Manoos who found his small wada pav business under threat. Small local skirmishes got aggravated by Shiv Sena joining in. Goli had to withdraw from the Aarey booths, but in this whole process got crores of free publicity! As Venky puts it – ‘Agar main Mumbai marathon nanga bhi bhaagta, to bhi itna publicity nahin milta..’

Licking his wounds from the Aarey exit, Venky realized that there are no Domino’s in Italy – the home of the pizza. Around the time of the Aarey episode, Venky received his first enquiry from outside of Mumbai – Nasik. Over the next few years, 3500 enquiries have manifested into 350 stores spread across 90 cities and 21 states.