Childhood friends lose their jobs, start a meat business and sell it for Rs 10 Crore in 2 years
Childhood friends who lost their jobs while locked in, start and run a meat business for Rs 10 crore
Aurangabad:
Tragedy struck the lives of Akash Mhaske and Aditya Kirtane in mid-2020 amid the COVID-19 lockdown.
Childhood friends who later became engineers spent the first month of the course watching movies, but continued restrictions caused their respective employers to fire them.
Instead of applying for a job in the city of Maharashtra blessed with some industrial activity in the vicinity, they decided to start on their own.
Reading books about successful businesses reinforces this decision. But they weren’t sure what exactly to do.
A vocational training in meat and poultry processing conducted by a local teacher was a coincidental moment.
The business idea is to enter the highly unorganized meat market with a reliable supply to retail consumers on demand.
The idea seemed odd, and the budding entrepreneurs didn’t get enough support from their families at first.
“Our family initially thought that no one would marry us because of the nature of the work we were doing. Then they stood by us,” Aditya Kirtane told PTI.
Starting from a 100 square meter space in their neighborhood with an investment of Rs 25,000 managed by friends from their savings, their venture ‘Apetitee’ has grown well and is now generating more than Rs 4 lakh a month. While the business continued to gain traction, it was also discovered by Fabi Corporation, another city company.
Fabi bought a majority stake in Apetitee for Rs 10 crore recently, and the company’s co-founders Kirtane and Mhaske will continue to stick with the brand with a minority stake.
“The profit margin they work with is 40%. Butchers are a completely unorganized segment in Aurangabad,” said Fabi director Fahad Syed.
Syed said that after the acquisition, the “Apetitee” brand will continue, and they will introduce newer products such as pre-marinated products. A series of investments are also planned, he added.
These will include developing an app for consumers to place orders, renovating 100 stores over the next three years to ensure the brand has a physical presence, and creating a fleet of electric vehicles to deliver orders. order to the door, Syed said.
Syed said that the new management is marketing the business through online and word-of-mouth means, demonstrating confidence that the brand will create 2,500 direct and indirect jobs in Aurangabad as expansion takes place.
He also said plans are also underway to bring the joint venture beyond Aurangabad into other tier II and tier III cities of Maharashtra.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
