HEALTHY
BITES
Shyam Bagri and Aditya Bagri
Founder & Director, Bagrry’s
Muesli and oats are among the top health foods that are dominating the market today. But one homegrown company had the foresight to pioneer the creation of these products in India back in the 1990s; long before the Internet revolution—Bagrry’s. The Bagrry’s group is one of India’s leading suppliers of cereal-based products with a lineage of over 50 years in food processing. Standing strong at a current revenue of Rs 180 crores, they not only disrupted the market to stand tall alongside competitors such as Kellogg’s, but they also created a niche for themselves with their philosophy of honest health and nutrition.
Their story began with one plant in Delhi back in 1979 where they started out by using just spare products of their family’s other flour mills. Soon, their B2B division was supplying raw materials to companies such as Nestle, GlaxoSmithKline and Britannia. They then diversified into a B2C business launching their range of cereals, muesli and oats.
Anuj Rakyan
Founder and Managing Director, RAW Pressery
With the goal to address the scarcity of honest and transparent products in India, Anuj Rakyan created India’s first and largest clean label company, RAW Pressery (a part of Rakyan Beverages). Growing up as an athlete, Anuj understood the importance of eating healthy and maintaining an active lifestyle. His keen interest in health and fitness paired with his understanding of the space led him to launch India’s first truly healthy brand of cold-pressed juices.
A graduate from Duke University, North Carolina, Anuj began his career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. He then moved to the world of brand consulting at FutureBrand, New York. Before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey, Anuj spent the past decade building operations and helping brands in the diamond jewelry industry, having worked with brands such as Gitanjali Gems.
HEALTH
DRINKS
ACCESSORIES
Dilip Kapur
A business that was built out of a leather-crafting hobby in the late 1970s, Dilip Kapur began making leather goods under the name Hidesign with just one worker in his workshop in Puducherry.
Hidesign not only understood leather well but also stuck to its roots of ‘vegetable’ tanning – a technique which is slow but creates strong and lasting leather. Using centuries-old skills, natural seeds and barks native to South India, paid off as Hidesign became a leader in use of vegetable-tanned leather across the globe. Hidesign also used Marca Punto stitching — a time-consuming process where every stitch is embossed by a heated metal foot.
Musthafa PC
Co-Founder and CEO, iD Fresh
Founded in 2005, iD Fresh always been about preserving the tradition of Indian cooking. Idli batter was iD Fresh’s first product and still remains more than half of its staple earnings.
The co-founder and CEO, Musthafa PC, 44, was born in a village called Wayanad where his father worked as a daily wage labourer. His humble beginnings strengthened his social consciousness to build a world of equal opportunities.
Musthafa PC, a school dropout, went on to pursue Computer Science from NIT Calicut and his MBA from IIM Bangalore. He, along with his cousins, found a perfect mix of urad dal and rice which makes deliciously and soft idlis. The batter at iD Fresh is 100 percent natural.
FRESH
FOOD
ONLINE GROCER
Hari Menon
With a vision of setting up India’s most comprehensive online food and grocery company, Hari Menon co-founded BigBasket.com in December, 2011. Today, not only has his vision come to fruition, his company's success has gone far beyond his imagination. BigBasket.com is now one of India’s largest online supermarkets with an expansive range of over 20,000 products and over 1,000 brands, and is available to consumers in 25 cities. As for revenue; in the first year itself, the company generated up to Rs 30 crore in Bangalore.
Ajay Gupta
Founder and Managing Director, Capital Foods Limited
Ajay Gupta, founder of Capital Foods, has a formidable advertising background. He spent several years as the chairman and managing director of Forefront Advertising and Marketing. That could be the secret sauce behind the strong brand recall of Ching’s Secret.
Capital Foods was launched in 1996 as a food company exporting frozen parathas among other Indian dishes to America and Europe before it embarked on the Ching’s journey in India.
INSTANT
MEALS
PERSONAL
CARE
Samrath Bedi
An economics and psychology graduate from the University of Rochester, New York, Samrath Bedi left a thriving career in corporate banking to return to India and join his mother Mira Kulkarni to nurture and grow a fledgling skincare business. Forest Essentials, the authentic skin care brand founded by Kulkarni, is today the largest player in the luxury hotel amenities and spa business, catering to more than 230 hotels and resorts.
The brand has fused the 6,000-year-old science of Indian Ayurveda with modern elements to appeal to a contemporary audience. With Forest Essentials, Bedi and Kulkarni revolutionised the Indian beauty industry by creating a radically new market.
Dr. Mahesh Gupta
Chairman and Founder, Kent RO Systems Ltd.
Mahesh Gupta was the first member of his service-class family who chose the entrepreneurial path. His quest for technological innovation led him to transform the water purification industry in India and launch Kent RO water purifiers. Today, the brand commands a market share of about 40 percent in the RO water purifier segment.
Back in 1998, his children suffered from jaundice and their doctor recommended the use of a water purifier. Gupta researched and analysed the available water purifiers in the market to ensure his children were getting clean drinking water. Being dissatisfied with what was available in the market, Gupta decided to create his own. After several trials, he made his a water purifier based on Reverse Osmosis Technology marking the origin of Kent RO Systems.
WATER
PURIFIERS
ROBOTICS
Samay Kohli & Akash Gupta
Founded in 2011, multinational technology company GreyOrange has grown exponentially in the past decade with offices in India, USA, Asia and Europe. The company, which designs, manufactures and deploys advanced robotics systems for automation for warehouses, distribution and fulfilment centres, also has state-of-the-art R&D centres in Singapore and India.
Samay Kohli, group Chief Executive Officer, and Akash Gupta, Chief Technology Officer, the two people at its helm, have raised the benchmark of efficiency by keeping innovation at the forefront. While Akash is focused on driving R&D and hiring the best talent for the company, Samay’s aim is to acquire one of the largest market shares in the automation industry globally.
Anita Dongre
Founder, The House of AND
Anita Dongre is a fashion industry veteran who has been at the forefront of the industry in India for more than 20 years. Her designs showcase Indian aesthetics for the global woman of today, keeping comfort at its core. Being an environmentalist and a supporter of PETA, Anita ensures she creates sustainable, cruelty-free clothing and accessories. In other words, her fashion represents conscience. In her quest to revive dying crafts, she has provided hundreds of rural artisans an opportunity to work from the comfort of their homes. She has also helped set up various units in areas with unskilled work force and provided them with vocational training of sewing and stitching.
FASHION
DESIGN
EDTECH
Byju Raveendran
Born to teacher parents in Azhikode, Kerala, Byju was a self-learner from a young age and used to develop different learning methods to understand concepts better. He started BYJU’S with the vision to help students fall in love with learning and change the way India learns. Byju believes that children can learn a lot more outside the classrooms by playing multiple games.
After cracking CAT for the second time in 2005 and clearing IIM A, B and C, Byju realised that there was something special about the way he approached CAT, which set him apart from the lakhs who appeared for the exam. BYJU’S classes started in 2008 and it became a household brand due to his unique teaching style and focus on learning. In the year 2009, Byju undertook his first experiment with technology by launching online video-based learning for CAT through VSAT. In 2011, the company was incorporated (Think and Learn Pvt Ltd) with focus on the K-12 space.
Nithin Kamath
Founder and CEO, Zerodha
Zerodha has pioneered the concept of discount broking in India. The company launched operations on August 15, 2010, aiming to break barriers that traders and investors face in India in terms of cost, support, and technology. Zerodha’s disruptive pricing models and in-house technology have made them the biggest stock brokers in India by active retail clients, and the biggest by trading volumes on the top Indian stock exchanges.
Founder Nithin Kamath started his career at 17; he managed money and traded stocks on behalf of wealthy clients for a decade before his brother Nikhil joined him in the business. In 2009, an election year in India, they squared off all their positions ahead of the poll results, realising they lost out an opportunity to make money. That is when they decided that Nikhil, who turned out to have a real penchant for trading, would continue to trade while Nithin would build the brokerage firm. The rest, as they say, is history.
FINANCIAL
SERVICES
