Jiyo India, a food chain that makes its customers workout for extra cheese!
The Journey
Jiyo India was started by Pankaj and his friend Ashutosh Mundra, who later left the venture for personal reasons. But soon Pankaj met Uddipta Ghosh at a Startup Saturday event, who later joined him as his partner in the business. Pankaj had worked at Oracle after graduating from IIT Kharagpur, while Uddipta worked at Thomas Cook before joining Jiyo India full time in December 2012. It helped that both of them are very health savvy and foodies at heart. Uddipta looks after operations, branding and procurement while Pankaj takes care of marketing, expansion and the DNA of the company.
“Sandwich has a pan India acceptance and they aren’t sold under a particular brand. This prompted us to start with sandwiches and slowly introduce other products that are healthy and tasty. But we said no to cold drinks and fried snacks,” shares Uddipta. Jiyo India, as a brand symbolizes and promotes salubrity and at a Jiyo India outlet you would find health-related magazines on food counters and you may also have to sometime prove your fitness to get extra goodies.
Based in Salt Lake, Kolkata, Pankaj chose the city because of the growing number of IT companies in the area. It also helps that business operation and infrastructure cost is low in Kolkata, when compared to other big metros. Their first outlet was outside the gym of Unitech Infospace IT Park. Pankaj claims that people started liking their products at the onset as they were affordable and tasty, but scaling up became a problem because of his lack of experience in the food business.
The Uncommon in Common
While we all know of sandwich varieties like cheese, vegetable etc, Jiyo India offers sandwiches like Calcium rich sandwich and Diabetic sandwich – at the same time maintaining an Indian touch in the products. They have also introduced many changes in normal products like soups and shakes. “One of the activities, which now has become our trademark, is doing dumb belling at our counter 10 times to get extra cheese for free. The message being Eat what you like but make sure you burn those calories through exercise,” says Pankaj ostentatiously.
Jiyo India today boasts of clientele like TCS, Genpact, Tech Mahindra, Cognizant and Fortis Hospital – who have all set up a 24X7 snacks counter in their office. The startup is also waxing its presence among youth by tying up with colleges like NIFT and KPC Medical College. A bootstrapped venture, Pankaj initially invested Rs 2.5 lakhs from his savings, and is now looking for funds for expansion. Jiyo India is operationally profit and Pankaj claims the venture is registering a profit of 20% – 25%. Jiyo India has found a mentor in Hari Bala Subramaniam who is the president of Kolkata Chapter, TiE and a member of NASSCOM. Currently, Jiyo India serves almost 150-plus orders at each of its counters, and currently has eight to ten counters in total. Jiyo India comprises of a team of 15 - 16 people.
Jiyo India has a horde of new plans that includes introduction of new products and expansion to other metros. After betting big on sandwiches, Jiyo India now plans to introduce a host of new sauces on its La Carte. The venture is looking to expand to Gurgaon and Hyderabad with 50 stores in next two years and 100 in the next five years. “We have plans of tie up with Talwakars, VLCC and other gyms to offer some discounts for our customers. We want to emerge as a brand synonymous with health and want to organize events like marathon to help cement our positioning,” shares Uddipta.
