Munaf Kapadia quit his job with Google to sell samosas in India. Why??!!
Thanks The Bohri Kitchen.
Thanks The Bohri Kitchen.
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00:00I quit Google to sell samosas
00:13To pursue a career in something which I had absolutely no background in, selling food
00:18The answer to this question is actually a conversation that I had with a very senior
00:30member in the company when one fine day he invited me to the meeting room to talk about
00:36my career and he asked me that, Munaf, what are your plans with the Bori Kitchen and with
00:42your job and your career. He said that Munaf, stop looking at life from a 1 year lens, instead
01:00look at it from a 5 year lens. What does that mean? So, a 1 year lens would mean that, don't
01:07worry about what would happen if you quit Google today to pursue a job, like what will
01:12happen next year. Because the fact is that, even worst case scenario, let's say I quit
01:18Google, I started the Bori Kitchen and 1 year later it's not a success, I'll get a job again,
01:25I'll find another job and maybe Google again, maybe another company. But 5 years later I'll
01:30be back on the same trajectory that I would have been anyway, because things average out,
01:34especially when you work hard. But, now imagine if the Bori Kitchen does succeed, so 1 year
01:43later you decide that this is worth it, you keep it going, 2 years into it you keep it
01:46going, 5 years later you're still doing it. It kind of changes your life in a way that
01:54no 9 to 6 job could ever have.
02:04It started because of a fight I had with my mother, where I was sitting at home, in my
02:21living room right here and I was watching TV and my mom came and changed the channel
02:27to watch a Saaz Bahu show. It led to a small argument where I told her that, mom, I think
02:35you're this incredibly talented person, why don't you do something else with your time.
02:39She put me in my place immediately, saying that, Munaf, I have raised all of you, I have
02:46put in all of this energy to run this household, now I can relax. But it did lead to one idea,
02:55which is the Bori Kitchen, where the community and the cuisine, which belongs to my community,
03:01the Bori community, it's something that I've always wanted to experiment with, to market.
03:06And I have access to the best Bori chef in the world. So I wanted to bring these two
03:10things together and see is there a way to test that opportunity out. And setting up
03:17a restaurant was too scary. So I did the next best thing, I started inviting a few strangers
03:22to my place, to actually eat food made by my mother.
03:30While today, the Bori Kitchen might not be this amazing success, and my attempts at scaling
03:36it might not have succeeded the way I wanted them to, but it's given me an amount of self-esteem,
03:43it's given me confidence, it's given me experiences, it's allowed me to meet people, it's given
03:47me things which no job can honestly offer. And, and when you suddenly evaluate decisions
03:55like that, it just makes a lot more logical sense. And that's how I quit Google to sell samosas.
04:06The reason I chose Bori cuisine is, Bori food is highly experiential because of the Bori
04:12thal. We sit around this three-foot diameter steel plate, we sit around it and we eat directly
04:17from it. And, and it's, it's, you sit shoulder to shoulder with seven people, many a times
04:24they're complete strangers, you know, if you go for a wedding, and you serve over seven
04:28courses, there are traditions we follow, we start the meal by tasting salt, we alternate
04:33between savoury and sweet. It's all a fantastic experience for somebody who hasn't experienced
04:39it already. On top of that, the food itself is incredible. It's incredibly mainstream
04:45in terms of its palatability. But in terms of its availability, it's just not available
04:49outside the community. So I decided that this just intrigues my marketing brain, that this
04:57is something worth trying out.
05:03I faced challenges with regards to standardizing my mom's food, when I wanted to scale the
05:07delivery business. I faced challenges when I finally did scale the delivery business.
05:11I set up five delivery centers, we were doing over 200 orders per day. But it wasn't profitable
05:16because of just the broken business model of on-demand delivery. I've gone bankrupt
05:22in 2016, when I discovered that I hadn't paid VAT for, you know, my business. I've faced
05:33challenges with regards to staffing, hiring people, realizing that the talent that I've
05:40grown in-house suddenly wants to leave for pastures. As an entrepreneur, I think you
05:45kind of have to know that you're doing this for the journey rather than the destination.