Shashank Paranjape’s Paranjape Schemes
nShashank Paranjape’s Paranjape Chemicals started operations with nine people on board. However, six months into the business, his luck ran out and he was duped by his friend.
nIn 1987, Paranjape came to know of someone who owned a vacant plot in Pune measuring 10,000 sq ft. He expressed his wish to construct a multi-storey building and the person readily agreed. Paranjape paid him Rs 100,000 (FJ$3000) and got into an agreement to give him two flats on completion of the project. Paranjape the new company Paranjape Schemes (Construction).
nParanjape’s approach was simple. He would reinvest every bit of the profit back into the business to expand operations. Last financial year his company registered a turnover of Rs Rs 15 billion and made Rs 2.25 billion in net profit (2013-14). This year he has a target of Rs 20 billion.
Dinesh Agarwal’s IndiaMart
nAfter acquiring a B.Tech degree in computer science from the Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, Kanpur, Dinesh Agarwal took up a job as systems analyst at HCL Technologies.
nFinally, he settled on building a platform for businesses to display products via dedicated Web pages. He named the venture, IndiaMart InterMesh.
nThe idea was to help the small and medium enterprises in the country market their products and services. Convincing customers to first buy computers, which, in turn, would help in the promotion of their business was quite a task.
nAs business started growing, he had to deal with several issues and the most irksome among these was looking for bigger office space.
nIn 2007, he invested Rs 70 million to purchase a two acre plot in Noida and build a new office. He has around 1 million products and almost 1.5 million suppliers. In 2013-14, the company generated a turnover of around Rs 2 billion.
Dheeraj Gupta’s vada pav chain Jumbo King
nAfter Dheeraj Gupta completed his MBA in hotel management in 1998, he decided to start his own venture. The idea was to establish a sweets manufacturing and distribution business. Within two years, he lost around Rs 5 million.
nWhat caught his attention, in particular, was how successful food chains such as McDonalds, Dominos and Subway primarily focused on one product — burger, pizza, sandwiches — and, yet, had a huge customer base.
nVada pav is a spicy Maharashtrian snack. He found that there were hundreds of vendors selling the snack on the city streets. The market was huge but unorganised. he decided to get into the vada pav snacks business.
nGupta somehow managed to raise around Rs 200,000 to start the business. He leased space for an outlet just outside Malad railway station.
nThe idea was to outsource the manufacturing of the patties to a vendor for a small fee. We would fry them in the store and concentrate on sales. Last year, Jumbo King crossed a turnover of Rs 250 million and Gupta is hopeful of revenues of Rs 450 million in 2014-15.
Ajjay Agarwal’s Maxx Mobile
nWhen Agarwal was 15 years old, he dropped out of school to join his father’s electronic trading business in Mumbai. He launched his own company in January 2002.
nAgarwal began with a seed capital of Rs 1 million, which came from his savings. The first step was to have his proprietorship firm registered in the name of Max Mobiles and Phone Accessories; it was only in 2004 that he set up Maxx Mobile as a company. Initially, he would stamp my brand name on imported mobile phone batteries and sell them to dealers in Mumbai.
nAt the beginning of 2004, he figured that he should set up his own manufacturing unit for mobile phone batteries. The next obvious move was to expand the operations.
nThe next crucial year was 2008, when he started importing mobile phones and selling them under the brand name Maxx Mobile. In 2009, he signed on M S Dhoni as the brand ambassador and the advertising campaign during the T20 World Cup helped get eyeballs. Next on the cards is the manufacturing of Android mobile phones. In the meantime, he is looking forward to a turnover of Rs 15 billion by end-2017.
Pardeep Jain’s Karbonn
nIn the mid-1990s, mobile phones were just beginning to make a foray in the country, so Pardeep Jain decided to make the most of it.
nIn April 1996, he opened a small showroom at Kailash Colony and started dealing in mobile phones from top companies, such as Nokia and Samsung. Two years later, he went into an expansion mode by opting for national distributorship. By 2005, he had a team of 150 spread across the country and became the India distributors for players like HTC, LG and Motorola.
nHaving a huge dealer network in place, he was able to keep track of the market pulse and this is how he realised that the time was ripe to introduce his own brand. He joined hands with Bangalore-based United Telecoms Limited (UTL) to launch his own brand of cell phones, Karbonn.