Cyrus Driver, Founder, Calorie Care

The desire to be an entrepreneur was strong right from my school days but I had no capital to invest since I came from a middle-class background. So I studied hard and went to the right colleges, always with a view to eventually starting a new venture. After completing my MBA course from IIM Ahmedabad in 2000, I took up a job in private-equity firm. It was a deliberate decision as it gave me opportunity to mingle with entrepreneurs and companies heads and know more about their working styles, management skills, thought process behind the company.

I worked for five years in different PE firms, gained valuable experience and saved a nest egg to start my own company called Calorie Care in September 2005.

I was contemplating different business opportunities right through my years in PE. My criteria was to find a sunrise sector without too much organized competition and a business model that was not capital intensive. I was looking for something unique, where my prior knowledge of the sector could provide customised service and charge a premium. I realised that the fitness industry was huge worldwide and, more importantly, the urban Indians in metros were becoming calorie conscious as they began experimenting a lot with different fitness regimes. I briefly flirted with the idea of starting a fitness centre but realised that it was highly capital intensive,and there wasn't any scope of customisation and differentiation. I then zeroed in on the health food segment. 

Back in 2004, while I was still with a PE firm in Singapore, I had started doing the formative ground work for Calorie Care. I would make frequent trips to India to meet nutritionists, dieticians and also to check out the health food market in India. I also commissioned a market study of people frequenting gyms and parks in Mumbai to confirm that there was indeed latent demand for freshly cooked, health food in India. Then, I put together a core team of dieticians and chefs to start developing a large bank of tested healthy recipes. Together, for a year, we researched recipes,food habits as well as the logistics of supplying meals and developed our own planning software. With the help of this software we could customise the food chart of an individual based on his food-habits, disease history, lifestyle and food preferences. At last, in September 2005, we commenced operations in Mumbai. The initial impetus came in the form of word of mouth publicity and this one article by a known food critic, and so , year after a year, we found ourselves providing freshly cooked meals to 45 offices in Mumbai.

Getting our first corporate client, Wachovia Bank, was the big turning point for us. Nowadays, many corporate companies recognize that providing nutritious food to employees helps overall productivity and provides a better working environment. Going by statistics, today we get 40% of our revenues from corporate clients. Another milestone for Calorie Care came around in mid-2007 when we got funds from Helix Investments for our expansion plans to different cities. 

In India, geographical diversification is the biggest challenge for the freshly cooked, health food segment. Food habits and lifestyle change frequently and with every city added we have to start from scratch to give the customer a customised service depending on the local palate. We experienced first hand when we started our operations in Baroda where people have more affinity towards sweet items and fried farsan. 

At the end of the day, self-respect and a desire to create something that I can be proud of is what really drives me. However, my inspiration has been Jamsetji Tata and Narayan Murthy. For me, they are the true rock stars of India. 

The future of Calorie Care lies in customisation. Our dieticians spend lot of time with an individual before suggesting him the right meal option from a host of options. We started with lunches priced at Rs150 and above, but have recently introduced economy options starting at Rs75 per lunch. We have plans to start operations in Delhi and Bangalore in the first quarter of 2009. We are still contemplating whether to branch out on our own or to work with franchisees in other cities. However, we need to refine our sales and marketing strategy in order to reach out to other health-conscious people in a cost-effective manner -- most of whom don't even know we exist!