P Rajagopal:

P Rajagopal is a successful business magnate who started the popular Saravana Bhavan group of hotels. He is a man who, through sheer hard work and perseverance, rose from humble beginnings to become a person who is almost worshipped by his employees.

Rajagopal brought security and hope to the lives of his 4000 odd employees, and great tasting, yet cheap food to millions of people in Chennai. He is affectionately known as “Annachi” (elder brother) by all.

There are 20 outlets in Chennai, 33 in India and 47 around the world (including USA, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Middle East).

Dheeraj Gupta:

For making a fast food out of this humble quickie snack, Dheeraj Gupta after completing his MBA in hotel management in 1998, he decided to start his own venture. The idea was to establish a sweets manufacturing and distribution business. Within two years, he lost around 50 lakh.

What caught his attention, in particular, was how successful food chains like McDonalds, Dominos and Subway primarily focused on one product burger, pizza, sandwiches and, yet, had a huge customer base.

Vada pav is a spicy Maharashtrian snack. He found that there were hundreds of vendors selling the snack on the city streets. The market was huge but unorganized so he decided to get into the vada pav snacks business.

Gupta somehow managed to raise around 2 lakh to start the business. He leased space for an outlet just outside Malad railway station. The idea was to outsource the manufacturing of the patties to a vendor for a small fee.

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