Food King enters Delhi with restaurant, to adopt franchise model

The IIM-A and BITS Pilani alumni, who drew inspiration from his mother, an idli vendor, went on to set up Food King, a campus-based restaurant and catering business. He is now looking at new avenues of growth with a new restaurant in NCR and even a neighbourhood shopping app. 

Sarathbabu recently spoke to students at Loyola Institute of Business Administration, where he shared his success story. 

Talking about his primary business, Sarathbabu tells us, “Food King is currently in 12 locations pan India including five in Tamil Nadu (like Chennai and Erode) Delhi, Hyderabad and states like Rajasthan and Goa. We have a 300 plus strong workforce. 

We are into the retail food business like restaurants located within college campuses, as well as institutional catering. The campus based self-service eateries are in colleges such as SRM, Bharath and JKKN among others. 

Our annual turnover touches close to Rs 13 cr. Over 10 years, I have helped mentor several student entrepreneurs who have taken on the food business.” Sarathbabu is also keen on pushing his retail business in new directions. 

And a new fast food joint in the NCR region is the next step forward. He says, “Right now, I have started a new eatery in Gurgaon called Madras Dosa House, where we serve close to 100 dosa varieties. 

It has received a great response and we are looking at the franchise model in the coming few months. We have also developed the concept of a virtual store where people can order products like medicines, groceries or virtually anything you can purchase from your neighbourhood stores.” 

Talking about finding success in business with virtually negligible investment, he tells us, “One of the most successful business models we witnessed recently came from the food aggregator space, like Swiggy and Uber Eats. 

Their biggest advantage is that they base their businesses on top of other businesses, with virtually zero assets to speak of. I have seen that whenever you look for a business model where you enable other businesses to make money alongside you, you tend to grow a lot more faster.” 

Sarath also urged students to look beyond the lure of multi-million dollar pay packages and look for opportunities to broaden one’s potential in the best possible manner. He says, “It’s important that you take up vocations keeping in mind the requirements of the common population of India. 

Find entrepreneurial ventures where there is scope for some sort of social justice.” Having mentored more than 500 student entrepreneurs over the course of his career and having won more than 70 business related awards, he divides his time between work and talking to aspiring businessmen around the country and beyond as well.