Ozva AdminAmerican actor and comedian Milton Berle famously said, “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”
And that’s what business owners do, day in and day out.
Starting a small business can be daunting, considering the many obstacles and impediments that the process brings with it. But despite the many shaky stocks, there is no shortage of aspiring entrepreneurs across India.
Week after week, SMBHistory brings you moving stories from small, medium and large businesses that show entrepreneurial spirit, determination and initiative. As 2022 comes to a close, we’ve selected the top 10 stories we’ve published on SMBStory this year.
Graduate Chaiwali
“Opening a tea stall is nothing new. Lots of people do that, but a girl, especially an economics graduate, it’s not usual for her to sell tea on the road]and maybe that made me famous,” says Priyanka Gupta, aka Graduate Chaiwali, in an interaction with SMBHistory.
Priyanka opened a small tea stall in April 2022 in front of the Patna Women’s College in Patna, Bihar. In just four months, she opened another tea stall in the city, selling about 400 cups of tea every day, and made a profit of about Rs 1.5 lakhs.
In August, actor Vijay Deverakonda, who was in Patna to promote his latest film, visited Priyanka’s tea stall.
While Priyanka’s franchise business has been on the rise with two more stores in the city, the past two to three months have been difficult for Priyanka after her store was confiscated by Patna Municipality.
In a recent interaction, Priyanka says that she is rebuilding her shop and that the challenges have only made her stronger. “The problem now is not money. I just want to stay true to my vision and expand my business,” she says.
Avimee Herbs
When Vinita Agarwal was having hair fall problem during the second wave of COVID-19, her parents RK and Shakuntala Devi Choudhary, also known as Nanaji and Naniji, decided to make natural hair oil at home.
Today, the couple has become an internet sensation, especially after the business allowed Nanaji to purchase her first car recently at the age of 85.
One to two orders a day, Avimee began receiving thousands when her grandson Siddhant Agarwal and his wife Ambika posted about the hair oil on Instagram and created a page for them.
nanaji was even invited to indian idol for her inspiring story.
The brand has even expanded to five more product ranges in the past three months and has achieved a sales run rate of Rs 25 crore, says Siddhant.
dawn bakers
Sunrise Bakers second and third generation entrepreneurs (left and right)
On a busy commercial street in one of India’s oldest cities, Dehradun, is Sunrise Bakers. More than 60 years after its inception, the bakery has expanded, opening a second store in the city in December 2021.
The expansion was notable as it came after a particularly difficult year for the family legacy business, with the deaths of Amarjit Singh Jolly and Harmeet Singh Jolly, both second-generation businessmen carrying on the legacy inherited from their father Harnam Singh Jolly.
speaking to SMBHistoryRishika Jolly, a third-generation entrepreneur and daughter of Amarjit Singh, says that despite the challenges over all these years, the bakery has run profitably since its inception.
In 2022, Sunrise Bakers came up with holiday baskets. The company has also introduced new pastry ranges and will soon launch a D2C website.
dupatta bazaar
From the quality of the fabric to the colour, design and length, finding the right dupatta to pair with a dress is exhausting. And this is where Dupatta Bazaar, run by Gaurav Garg, bridges the gap.
Gaurav’s a-ha moment came at Mumbai’s Crawford Market, where he saw a woman scrambling all day to get a dupatta to match her outfit. Coming from a family involved in the textile business in Rajasthan, Ajmer, he was surprised. “I thought that the artisans and traders who deal in dupattas in Rajasthan struggle to get customers and here the customers were actually begging for those very products.”
He decided to start a one stop shop for all dupatta needs. In 11 years, he completed more than seven lakh orders and created a presence beyond Indian borders. The business has grown 300% this year, says Gaurav, adding that the base of rural artisans he works with has doubled to around 1,500.
the tea factory
A decade ago, then-entrepreneur Shashank Sharma, 22, decided to open a tea cafe along the lines of a popular chain of coffee shops.
“I was inspired by Cafe Coffee Day (CCD). People used to go to CCD for business networking, dating or whatever. After graduating, I was brainstorming a business idea and discussing my plans with my friends in a tapir chai. We were talking about the success of CCD and I [thought] Why can’t I open a tea cafe? Shashank says SMBHistory.
By 2012, there was already an established brand of tea cafes in the Indian market, but it was operating out of a big city, Shashank says, adding that he thought of bringing a tea cafe with a variety of offerings to his own city, Indore.
Shashank went on to build The Tea Factor, which now has 300 outlets and a global presence in the United Arab Emirates, Canada, the United Kingdom, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Chaiwala MBA
“Karna tha sangharsh toh road pe chai banaya (As part of my struggles, I made tea on the road),” says Prafull Billore, known as ‘MBA Chaiwala’. Prafull is not a foodie or a big cook, but he still built a multi-million dollar business selling chai (tea) all over India.
Hailing from Dhar, a small town in Madhya Pradesh, Prafull had lost his passion for MBA, which he had been studying at Ahmedabad University since 2017. However, reading books and learning from quotes from famous business leaders it kept him motivated.
Fast forward five years and the 25-year-old is now a billionaire entrepreneur who has built MBA Chaiwala, a Rs 4 crore (as of FY21) turnover business with over 100 outlets across India. .
Raheja Solar Food Processing
One way to reduce food waste is by drying fresh produce. Varun Raheja, founder of Raheja Solar Food Processing Pvt Ltd, says that global demand for dry goods currently stands at $70 billion.
Varun, a 25-year-old entrepreneur from Indore, says the inspiration to launch the company came after he learned about sustainable living and practices at the Jimmy McGilligan Center for Sustainable Development, an Indore-based NGO.
His interest in solving farmers’ problems led him to investigate solar dryers. A few years later, in 2019, he launched his own company. Since its inception, Varun says the company has been able to reduce the waste of 250 metric tons of produce by farmers across India.
EcoCushion Paper
For 40 years, Mahesh Agarwal worked with his cousins in their family business in Delhi. However, during the pandemic, Ella Mahesh had to move to Mumbai to be with her children.
It was during the relocation process in 2020 that Mahesh observed the amount of plastic being used as protective packaging.
“There was plastic everywhere around the floor,” says Mahesh’s daughter Varsha, adding: “We all know that plastic is harmful to the environment, but when we saw how much was used just to evacuate our house and how much What a problem it would pose to the environment, we see the general use of plastic every day by everyone around us.”
The incident gave Mahesh a reason to start a business again at his retirement age.
“We moved to Mumbai and he spent the first six to eight months doing research. Then he came up with the idea of making honeycomb paper wrap as a substitute for plastic bubble wrap,” says Varsha.
By June 2021, they have established a manufacturing plant at Navi Mumbai and started the business through a B2B website. They invested around Rs 50 lakhs to start the business. In July, they received their first order from a small business, and EcoCushion’s journey has been upwards ever since. Within a year, EcoCushion Paper has onboarded more than 2,000 small and medium-sized businesses, including Aadvik Foods, Upakarma Ayurveda, The June Shop, Mars Cosmetics, etc., and corporations like Westside, Nestle R&D, 1MG, and more.
IoTechWorld Aviation
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The journey of IoTechWorld Avigation, India’s first type-certified kisan drone company, began in 2017 when Deepak Bharadwaj and Anoop Upadhyay decided to enter the drone market that was foraying into India.
While Deepak initially leaned towards the defense space, the duo decided to focus on the agricultural sector after seeing a need for technology to help farmers improve crop production and make farming practices efficient. The duo invested around Rs 6 lakh to Rs 7 lakh of their savings to establish the base at Gurugram.
Between 2017 and 2020, the company sold around 200 drones to farmers.
Things took a turn in 2021 when the government set the budget for the drone PLI scheme and even drew up rules for manufacturing. Since then, the sector has boomed with over 200 entrants in the growing space.
IoTechWorld Avigation now manufactures 55% of its hardware components at its Gurugram facility. In the next two to three years, it aims for 100% indigenous production by setting up another unit in Hyderabad.
NavAlt
While ferries may seem like a cleaner mode of transportation, most ferries run on diesel, a highly polluting fossil fuel.
To help solve this problem, Kerala launched India’s first solar-powered ferry, ‘Aditya’, in 2017. By promoting the use of clean energy, the ship avoids burning 35,000 liters of diesel every year and helps reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Sandith Thandasherry, founder and CEO of Kochi-based NavAlt Solar and Electric Boats, says the boat has saved 100,000 liters of diesel to date. But it hasn’t stopped innovating; is working to build available green energy powered RORO (cargo ships) and advanced technical boats and vessels for fishermen that are affordable and easy to use.
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