Starting his entrepreneurial journey with Rs 30k, this man built a food catering business with Rs 4.6 Cr turnover

At 22, Delhi-based management consultant Manvir Singh Anand became a foodpreneur. In 2013, he invested Rs 30,000 to launch Knight Bites, a midnight food delivery startup to work from 10 pm to 4 am.

Manvir’s passion for food eventually led him to leave his corporate job behind and dive into Knight Bites full-time. After it was acquired by a private investor in 2015, he did not give up on his passion.

In 2016, he launched Knight Gourmet, a catering and event hospitality company. The acquisition of his first startup and booking advances from the company’s first clients allowed Manvir to start the business with an initial capital of Rs 30 lakh.

“Our business model, which started with catering, has evolved over time. Today, we are an integrated event hospitality solutions company. We manage end-to-end solutions for food courts at events, as well as hospitality requirements for VIP and player lounges and crew, police, and support staff,” he says in an interview with SMBStory.

The business, which clocks a turnover of Rs 4.6 crore, operates from its facilities in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.

Identifying the opportunity

The idea for Knight Gourmet came from Manvir observing how event organisers and management companies trusted established catering brands and large hotel chains without fully understanding their operations and working plans.

“Many of these 100-year-old catering companies worked like a cartel at most venues. Imagine catering to 5,000 people in a stadium, including VIPs, players, spectators and officials, without transparency or absolute clarity on the catering company’s workflow,” he says.

“I saw an opportunity to start a catering business that addressed these concerns and provided clients access to operational manuals, detailed workflows with day-wise menus, staff allocation, and better inventory control measures,” adds the entrepreneur.

With this intention, Manvir started Knight Gourmet. However, it was not easy making large scale event management companies and sports league organisers believe in the young team. Despite the odds, Knight Gourmet got its first big break when it catered the Indian Super League (ISL) franchise in New Delhi.

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Building end-to-end solutions

ISL was an early turning point in Knight Gourmet’s journey. Manvir noticed event managers delegating work to four or five different and specialised service providers. There was nobody providing end-to-end hospitality solutions for large scale events.

He felt traditional catering firms and hotels were rigid in their scope of work, commercials, and terms due to their lineage and industry network — a consistent pain point for event and sports league organisers.

“I felt the best way to sell Knight Gourmet’s services to event organisers was to educate and help them in building a hospitality architecture for events. We built an entire gamut of hospitality solutions and helped organisers take advantage of our solutions for their events. They could choose to easily replicate it year-on-year,” he says, adding that this gave Knight Gourmet an edge in acquiring new clients and getting repeat business.

Clients and pricing

The business began catering to the likes of IPL team Delhi Capitals (previously known as Delhi Daredevils), and events like Amazon SMBhav, IIFA Awards, Sahitya Aaj Tak, ZEE Arth Festival, and more. Knight Gourmet also lists Microsoft, Facebook and BMW as clients.

Unless clients are rigid on hiring a certain service from a hospitality provider, Knight Gourmet offers them its one-stop solution for their end-to-end hospitality needs. Its pricing stretches from as high as Rs 3,999 per person for pre-plated VIP lounges to as low as Rs 49 per person for simple refreshment boxes for event volunteers, support or police staff.

“Our philosophy is providing turnkey, end-to-end solutions. Nothing is too big or small for us. However, it takes great skill to serve the likes of Sachin Tendulkar or Rajnikant and a volunteer or a police official with the same degree of service and enthusiasm and without any bias,” he says, describing it as a “consistent yet rewarding challenge”.

Knight Gourmet competes against traditional catering companies that have built strong local area networks as well as larger hotel chains such as Marriott, Lalit, and Taj.

“We compete in these two categories across most bids and we stay ahead by offering transparent working plans to help the customer build a hospitality architecture for their events. We also offer a single point of contact for coordination and billing, which makes for a hassle-free experience,” he says.

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Impact of the pandemic

Until 2020, Knight Gourmet maintained a B2B approach involving a strong corporate sales team that worked with event management companies. The event management industry India was expected to cross Rs 10,000 crore by 2020-21. 

However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, in-person events were no longer a possibility.

“The pandemic affected what would have been the most profitable year for us — a year where we managed hospitality for events like IIFA Awards, Amazon SMBhav, Premier Badminton League, etc. Due to the lockdown, our revenue came down to zero and we had no work. It was the toughest eight moments we’ve faced till now,” Manvir says.

Knight Gourmet downsized from a team of 40 to a core team of 15. It also made a conscious decision to focus on a B2C approach and do a mix of bulk party packages, packed meals, and festive gifting solutions for individuals and corporates.

“This has kept our food business afloat. But with the lockdown norms loosening up, we are working on multiple briefs for events post-December 2020. We are in advanced talks with several sports and independent venue authorities to get venue empanelments. We are also building our portfolio of retail businesses and managed cloud kitchens to add more revenue streams to Knight Gourmet,” he says.

Manvir has also authored a book Catering your Way to Financial Independence, which is a step-by-step guide to help individuals start catering businesses even with no prior experience in the hospitality industry.

During this lockdown, he also added a new vertical to his existing business and named it TKG Ventures. It is a coaching, consulting, and incubation initiative for budding food entrepreneurs.

“In the last three months, we have trained over 2,500 people. The broad objective is to create one lakh self-employed professionals in the food services industry,” he says.