Street Smart

Street Smart

Mr. Toastmaster, fellow members and guest. The speech I have prepared today is something which not only encouraged me but will also inspire you all. I came across this story through a book named Connect the Dots written by Rashmi Bansal. This book is an account of the inspiring journey of 20 entrepreneurs without an MBA who dared to find their own path. The story is of street smart Pram Ganpati, the owner of the well-known food chain Dosa Plaza.  Reason to choose this story was that this guy completed his 10^th from a govt. school in a small village of Tamilnadu and started his career as a dishwasher in a bakery shop of Bombay. Completely unaware of Hindi or English language, looking to achieve his big dreams in a strange city ultimately led him to establish an international food brand.  He achieved all this without any formal training or education.

 

His struggle began as soon as he was abandoned by the man who brought him to Bombay from Chennai. With immense courage and high hopes, he decided to make a career. Starting from a dishwasher he found himself working as a tea boy in a hotel where his good nature and contacts led him to become a partner of 50% in a tea stall sponsored by one of his regular tea customers. He was soon fired when the greedy owner started making a good profit from the tea shop. Now Prem landed back to where he had started. It was the never say die attitude that helped him arise again, just like the phoenix bird which rises from its ashes.

 

He loaned some money from his uncle and set up his own tea stall but due to some problems the setup failed. Prem found another spot at Vashi, which was the beginning of his south Indian empire. Through trial and error method he learned to cook Idlis and Dosas which were a success and brought him great profits. His strengths were branding, costing, customer satisfaction and cleanliness. He also opened a Chinese stall beside which was a complete failure. 

 

But his journey to success was not a milky way and he witnessed a lot of hardships as well. The priority problems were being failure time and again in his experiments and the local problem of MCD, Police and neighbouring housing society. Despite all the troubles Prem never loosed hope and found a solution to all these problems by opening the eatery in an established rented shop. Prem focused on being different. He started modifying and experimenting on his Dosas to fulfil the demand of a variety of customers. Thus was invented the out of the box menu of Mexican Dosas, Manchurian Dosas, Paneer chilly Dosas etc. The young customers were his testers who gave their stamp of approval.

Prem coined the word PLAZA and so he focused on branding which led to the establishment of a flourishing brand.

Though not trained Prem always was updated with marketing and specification skills. He was always inspired by famous food chains like McDonald's and Pizza Hut and whenever he was stuck he used to think how they would have done it.

 

He keeping an eye on these brands decided to trademark his Dosa Plaza and his 27 different recipes as well. Soon his brand and the recipes were one of its kinds in the entire market. He opened two more shops but the journey of his food chain started from the New Bombay’s first mall named Centre One. When some of the associates came to visit his shop for lunch they were so impressed that they offered him to open an outlet in their upcoming food court. Despite all the disapproval and warning of his brothers, he wanted to play the gamble to success. Once again he depended on his relatives and friends as the amount required to set up the outlet was very huge.  The interiors and the menu were prepared and the outlet proved a big hit from day one leading to a profit of 15-20%. Now flourishing different outlets far apart was a difficult task. It was then he came to know about Franchising.  Not only Franchising but marketing as well were a priority for Prem as it was important for him to bring customers to all his outlets. His roommate an IT guy advised him to hire an agency for his marketing. Before being a client himself Prem researched the meaning of these two important techniques to flourish through the internet.  Waking pace to pace with the market trends Prem became the proud owner of 26 outlets across India and an outlet in New Zealand serving 108 varieties of Dosas which are not just the part of the menu but are actually served.

By the story we get immense inspiration to go for our dreams. It is the dedication; zeal and courage that can make even a common man reach great heights of success. One needs to stop thinking and start doing from this very time. The right time to begin is now!