Sarath Babu began his life in the slums of Chennai. In 2006, he decided to turn entrepreneur with just Rs 2,000. That was the start of ‘Food King’. Today, it’s a catering business across various cities and does revenue of Rs 8 crore.
Sarath Babu’s story is all about determination, a mother’s hard work and enterprise and a family’s fight against the odds. One of four siblings, Sarath accompanied his mother as she sold idlis on the pavements of Chennai to supplement meager income. Despite the hardships, his mother encouraged him to get an education and he made her dream his mission. With the help of his family and a loan of Rs 30,000, Sarath managed to get into the prestigious BITS Pilani and followed that with an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. But unlike most of his peers Sarath deciding to take up a job and instead turned entrepreneur. Getting into the food business came naturally to this 26 year old given the years spent forking his mother’s idlis as a child. ‘Food King’ was launched in 2006 to cater to the needs of students at his alma mater - IIM Ahmedabad and soon he expanded to his other training ground BITS Pilani.
Serving 8,000 meals every day, Food King today serves five universities across India and its gross revenue is Rs 8 crore. Sarath has also recently launched a fast food restaurant and hopes to take the count to a 1000 by 2016 touching revenues of Rs 50 crore but the journey for this entrepreneur has not been an easy one.
In this particular sector, the challenges were availability of capital which is there for any other sector. Then, the availability of quality manpower which was also one of the biggest challenges. The third challenge was since you are a first time entrepreneur and you don’t have any capital at all so you don’t get any credit track record in the market. So nobody is willing to give credit. You have to put all your investments and only then you could start.
His determination has made him not just a true leader in business but in public life as well. The dark horse in the 2009 general election, Sarath polled more than 15,000 votes in his debut attempt. Despite that drubbing he didn’t give up on his political aspiration. He stood as an independent candidate from Velachery in the recent Tamil Nadu elections but lost again.
When he watched the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, he thought of going into politics. His manifestos would be to see a hunger free India in his lifetime. He wants to create at least 1,000 entrepreneurs in his constituency in the small and medium segment. He promised that in the next five years you would not find even a single child from his constituency missing school.
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