“It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” - John Wooden
These are not merely words, but the reality and what Rahul Jain experienced while running his own firm. Rahul is the Co-Founder of the home food services venture - ‘The Burger Bros’. He says, “Food is my zone. It is something that brings everyone together. I am passionate about cooking, knowing what people like, and understanding their tastes and preferences.” One fine evening, when the whole world was engulfed by the deadly coronavirus and the food market was completely shut, Rahul was chit-chatting with his friends wondering how nice it would be if they could order something online to satiate their hunger pangs. That is when the idea of starting his own Cloud Kitchen stuck in his head. He was joined by two of his friends in conceptualizing the idea and bringing it into existence. They took a week’s time to decide upon the menu and the areas to deliver food. Meanwhile, they contacted people to handle food delivery and also created an Instagram page for their startup. They already had more than 500 followers on their page, even before the official launch of The Burger Bros. They came up with some strategies to cut their costs, advertised their product in cost-effective ways, analyzed the market situation, and took some difficult decisions to reach their goal. The journey was tough but the fruits of the journey were worth the effort. The startup was launched with a bang and on the first day, all the burgers were sold out within three hours of launching. During the first week, they were completely sold out every day. In fact, the sales were more than what they had expected and they had to refuse to take the orders beyond their targeted limit. During the first three months itself, they were able to generate a whopping revenue of more than ₹ 1,00,000!
Rahul has an entrepreneurial mindset with creative out-of-the-box thinking. This helped him to successfully start his own food startup. He had presented his startup idea at 'Atal Incubation Mission', which is an initiative by the Government of India to promote the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in India. There were more than 100 participants and his idea was selected among the top 10 startup ideas. He has also won an inter-college cooking competition during his undergraduate days. The task was to prepare a cuisine without using a flame. Contestants were judged on various parameters like the authenticity of the dish, its taste, flavors, and garnishing the dish. Through this competition, he was able to experience the problems faced by a chef in order to deliver accurately on the customer’s requirements and expectations. To ace this competition, he analyzed the various difficulties and challenges coming his way and made strategies to make everything work and emerge successfully through it.
Rahul has always been a person who wanted to bring about a change and add value to society. He observed that there were a lot of women in his neighborhood who had lost their jobs during the lockdown and were looking for another job. There were also homemakers, who were really good at cooking and wanted to work. Rahul felt that he can guide all these women to start their own businesses by educating them about all the basics of beginning a startup like procurement of food licenses, registration process on Zomato, etc. With an aim of helping women become independent in order to earn a living, he started identifying such women who wanted to start their own food business and guided them as to how to achieve it. He looks at it as a great means of giving back to society.
Coming to the CAT preparation of Rahul, it was not an easy journey for him. Having failed at CAT once already, he was not even planning to take it again and was planning to join a private college for MBA, but life had something else in store for him. While running his startup, he just got a thought of giving one more attempt. He said, “When I’ve come so far in life, why not give one last attempt at CAT.” He had around 5 months in hand to prepare for the exam. He dedicated time on a regular basis for the preparation along with managing his startup. Being a proficient chess player helped him in the retention of information and analyzing the DI/LR sets. It helped him in decision-making while solving the sets. He scored 98.5 percentile in the DI/LR section of CAT. His hard work paid off and here he is, at one of the most prestigious B-Schools of India- IIM Rohtak.
He wants to make this MBA journey a memorable one for everyone. He is also a proficient poet and has written a beautiful poem in order to describe how he looks at his PGP journey at IIM Rohtak. This poem will enable every reader to feel life at an IIM in a nutshell. So just sit back and enjoy living the life of an IIM student!
Being Optimistic is the key,
It’ll never be ‘I’, it’ll always be ‘We’!
Changes are there, so just go and adapt,
Unexpected is the thing, and so I am all set!
Don't throw your sword between the battle,
We will win it all together!
Hectic will be a general trick,
But we are all ready with our kit!
It is a beautiful two years’ Vibe,
It is not the end of life!
Smile and laugh with full of your voice,
Because the PGP journey will test your Courage, Control, and Choice!