Young Turks is a one-stop shop for everything entrepreneurial. Hectic schedules, rising incomes and the fact that around 60% of Indian’s are under the age of 30 is creating a new appetite amongst consumers. As a result, sales of both western and local fast food chains are growing almost 28% a year.
Twenty-nine year old Lokesh Bharwani took the plunge into this growing market and brought America’s favourite food to India with his venture - Mad Over Donuts. So did Bharwani help indulge Indians with their sweet cravings?
If the thought of rich dark chocolate with almond bits on a bed of soft and fluffy dough has you are drooling, you have Bharwani to blame. A sweet tooth made Bharwani shift base from Singapore to India and set up Mad Over Donuts in 2008, India’s first donut chain. Bharwani began his affair with a stack during his student days in the US where he would binge on donuts for breakfast.
Bringing various ingredients together, Bharwani brought in a team of food science specialists who perfected the recipe for eggless donuts after a year of testing. From the making of the dough to the flattening to the hole being punched in to the baking - Mad Over Donuts’ live kitchen gives you the opportunity to witness the dough to donut making process upfront. With the majority of ingredients imported, what is it that makes customers go Mad Over Donuts?
Bharwani: The number one is the product. We have spent over a year and 100’s of R&D trails out of our laboratory in Singapore. So to get the doughnut to actually be that soft and melt in your mouth and that whole ‘love at first bite experience’ as our tagline says, I would say it is one of our key advantages. The second one is our connect with our customers. We really like to have everyone walk into our stores and really go Mad Over Donuts. We have a very strong connection with our customers.
We have over 300,000 fans on Facebook - that gives us a two way interaction about their experiences, about what they would want about the brand and we can therefore respond to that to actually make the brand what our consumers want it to be. So that strong connect as well as the product, we will take us ahead of any competitors that do come. Donuts are something which is so common place around the world and yet in India right now, I would still consider it a niche product. We would need a couple of other strong brands to actually come in to make donuts a little bit more of a staple part of peoples lifestyle as opposed to being a niche product as it is today.
Keeping this in mind, Bharwani has kept Mad Over Donuts pricing as appetizing is the items on its menu. From Rs 40 for a classic donut and Rs 50 for the others to Rs 200 for a box of six - Mad Over Donuts serves you over 25 varieties.
Introducing new flavors regularly, Bharwani believes that donuts have just entered the Indian menu and will soon become popular in the fast food market.
Bharwani: We are seeing that donuts have a long history. It goes back into the 1920’s in the US and Europe. There is a lot of history behind the product and it is universally accepted. Whether it’s a kid, whether it’s an adult, people around the world, everyone seems to like donuts. Though it was not in an organised way over there, everyone used to go into neighborhood bakeries and there used to be a donut. So they are familiar with a round product or a round pastry. We are in three cities right now so the potential of growth is immense. India is a very large place, we very large market and we don’t see why the entire country will not be Mad Over Donuts very soon.
This doesn’t seem a distinct dream given that Mad Over Donuts has already sold over 10 million donuts since its inception. Bharwani and his team of 500 are now looking at adopting the franchise route to expand the business. In 2010, Bharwani divested 33.3% stake to the Mirah Group, a conglomerate with interest in hospitality and the food and beverage industry.
Bharwani: Towards the end of 2010, the Mirah Group took a strategic stake in Mad Over Donuts. Since then we basically tap resources and have grown quite extensively ever since we joined hands with them. They have the experience of running a lot of brands, they have experience of scaling up brands right across the country. Just getting the inputs, the experience and tapping on some of the resources is something in which we all work together to expand Mad Over Donuts. It does operate as a separate company and it is more of inputs and support as the company grows. That has helped that experience and that experience of growing brands internationally has certainly helped the expansion of Mad Over Donuts in the last couple of years.
But the presence across 35 stores in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune - Bharwani now wants to take his venture pan India and open 70 stores by next year. He is also extending his offering with cupcakes to be launched in May this year.
We hope you continue to serve up just dessert.
Source: moneycontrol.com
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