This week I have been lucky enough to interview Ashish Kapur.
Ashish went back to India from the US to start his own venture, Yo! China, which is now India’s leading Chinese fastfood chain. Yo! China was born out of the concept of providing top quality Indian-Chinese fare at reasonable rates.
Adam: You are an engineering and telecoms graduate, can you talk us through how you came up with the niche idea for Quality Chinese Food at Value Pricing?
Ashish: There was this huge opportunity in India (still is) to create a national brand in food & beverage. In India, the top 3 cuisines from a demand perspective are South Indian, Chinese and North Indian and none of these cuisine had a brand with national presence (this was in 2003). I picked Chinese cuisine to start a restaurant chain because (a) Its very popular with our core target market of youth and families (b) There was a need for quality food served in a trendy ambience with exciting menus and situated in hip location.
Existing restaurants were either very upscale and serious or there were neighborhood vans selling unhygienic food with poor ambience.
Today we run the largest Chinese chain in India with 50 points of presence across 14 cities!
Adam: Is Yo! China the first business that you have started up or were you entrepreneurial whilst at college and before?
Ashish: Yo! China is the first full time business venture. Prior to this when I studied engineering at McGill University in Montreal, Canada; I had founded a student business initiative called Corporate McGill. This organization was a student consulting forum that picked the best brains at University and they consulted on projects across industry for companies. I was awarded the Scarlet Key (McGill highest Student Leadership Award) for founding this venture.
Adam: The business grew at a phenomenal rate, was this in accordance with you business plan or did you exceed all best case projections?
Ashish: We were lucky to be at the right place at the right time. India has grown tremendously with organized retail opening up over the past 6 years and we were able to create a brand that young consumers identified with and enjoyed. The focus has always been on growth via meal by meal excellence rather than outlet driven growth.
Adam: You worked for GE for a period of time has this impacted on your management style, what lessons did you take with you from such a colossal corporate structure?
Ashish: Working with GE was integral to my success at Yo! China. It taught me immense financial discipline, process creation and the need for a team with A players. Above all, we have built a business with strong values and rock solid integrity as we always wanted to be proud of what we have created and own.
Adam: You and your co-founders have a wealth of experience, do you believe that the expertise that you brought with you from your individual disciplines is what has created such a successful business so fast?
Ashish: Absolutely, one of the co founders Ajay Saini was a hotel management graduate who had built successful food brands in Delhi. Joydeep Singh, another co founder had managed airline marketing and also had experience in construction. I brought in an understanding of global concepts, financial management and process creation. It was a perfect fit. However, the most important aspect is that we got along really well and that energy got transferred to employees and associates.
Adam: You provide a value based product, how has the economic downturn impacted your business?
Ashish: Value brands like ours do better during downturns since consumers become a lot more value conscious. Also, we are value not cheap. What I mean by that is we offer value by ensuring a great ambience, food variety, big portion sizes, seated service with friendly staff all comes at a value price. Value is not about being priced the cheapest but being able to offer experience at a reasonable cost! Aspiration level does not decrease during a down turn and that’s the brand equity we have built up and capitalize during such times.
Adam: Do you believe that introspection and review are an important part of the business cycle and how do you incorporate this into this into you business processes?
Ashish: For a young business introspection is critical. We have created a market for organized Chinese restaurants in India and hence had to experiment a lot. Some worked and others did not. As we more than doubled our growth every year it was critical to incorporate the learning fast. The curve has definitely been steep! On a more formal level we have monthly reviews and quarterly Board reviews. I also keep an ear to the shop floor. Its critical to know what customers feel and how employees react. Every week I and the senior leadership team work in a restaurant serving guests and interacting with staff to get a ground level feel.
Adam: Has your recent business review and improvement programme started to show benefits already and is it a process that you would encourage other businesses to go through?
Ashish: Innovation is critical to our business and we just launched a brand new look and menu. We piloted it in one store and the results are great so we are renovating old stores to the new look and menu. The best market research in retail is to put up a store and see how consumers take to it. Its so much more tangible and real than theoretical reports and research.
Adam: Do you intend to export your brand to other countries?
Ashish: Yes, we will definitely be opening some stores in the middle east and South Africa over the next 2-3 years. We are also creating an Indian restaurant chain concept for the US and UK. Indian food is vastly popular worldwide but is still largely unorgainized. We would like to create a world class concept around that!
Adam: Where do you expect the business to be in 2 years time?
Ashish: Yo! China will become the restaurant of choice in India delighting guests with every meal served. Our employees will be our pride and in short we hope to create a brand that consumers love and the country is proud of!
Adam Toren
