From starting small to clocking Rs 200 Cr revenue, and other top SMB stories of the week
This week, SMBStory also spoke to the Managing Director of ARIS BioEnergy, Umesh Waghdgare. The Mumbai-based company is an aggregator which facilitates the conversion of used cooking oil into biofuel.
Flamingo heat belt helps people who are looking for the treatment of musculoskeletal disorders over the years. Given Flamingo’s popularity now, not many would believe that its founder Rajiv Mistry, who started the company when he was 22, had once thought to shut the business after a few years of its inception thinking that his idea was a failure.
This week, SMBStory also covered the inspiring story of Sheetal Cool Products Limited. The listed company is on a mission to give back to Amreli by putting it on the Indian map of entrepreneurship.
“Is shahar ne hume bahot diya hai (this city has given us a lot), now it is time to give it back,” says Yash Bhuva, Executive Head of SCPL based out of Amreli in Gujarat, told SMBStory.
Here’s how Ascent, Sheetal Cool Products and others were able to chart an inspiring tale of grit, perseverance and dedication.
Ascent Meditech (Flamingo)
Heat therapy is a common way to relieve back pain. And this is one of the reasons why Flamingo heat belt has been such a hit in the Indian market. While the product may now seem obvious, raising awareness and scaling the business was not an easy endeavour.
Talking to SMBStory, Rajiv says,
“In 1991, when I had built the heating belt, there was no one doing this in India. For people, it was an alien product. They relied on water bags for heating therapy and were happy using it. Thoughts crossed my mind that maybe I’m on the wrong path, I even thought many times to shutter the business but as destiny had its own plans, it took me a decade to make my product a success,” he says.
When Rajiv launched the heating belt, the annual revenue of the company turned out to be less than Rs 5 lakh in the first year. Today, three decades later, Flamingo, which operates under the company , is expected to touch revenue of Rs 200 crore, Rajiv claims.
AML’s major markets include India, East Africa, and Southeast Asia.
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Sheetal Cool Products
Founders of Sheetal Cool Products (SCPL) are on a mission to put their city – Amreli — on the map.
Beginning its journey from a paan shop in a street to building a publicly-listed food manufacturing company that aims to make Rs 300 crore turnover by the next fiscal year, SCPL has come a long way.
The company is now eyeing to capture a pan-India market from Gujarat's Saurashtra region.
SCPL makes ice cream, dairy products, and namkeens apart from other food items. Gujarat government has now given the company a go-ahead to set up 50 ice cream parlours in the region, the largest after Amul.
Moreover, SCPL is a publicly-listed company on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange. It also has a strong distribution network of over 300 distributors across six different states and has more than 35,000 retail outlets.
But how did SCPL turn their small shop into a profitable business? Yash says it is because his father and uncles did not create the company as owners but as a way to serve their society.
Other top stories of the week-
ARIS BioEnergy
Did you know that the oil used by your local restaurants is extremely harmful to your health? Moreover, there is a guideline in place regarding used cooking oil, which is often flouted by the owners of these eateries.
But how many companies and businesses are adhering to this norm? Not many, says entrepreneur and Founder of Mumbai-based , Umesh Waghdhare. In addition, he highlights that if the used cooking oil (UCO) is not reused, it is often drained out in water bodies, which harms the environment enormously.
He set up ARIS BioEnergy in Mumbai in January 2019 to start the aggregation process. It tied up with local eating joints in and around Mumbai to buy used cooking oil. It then sells it to refineries who are enrolled with FSSAI to process it into biodiesel.
Today, 27,000 outlets and eateries are part of the aggregation network. This year ARIS is also planning to set up a refinery where the used cooking oil can be converted into biofuel.
trueBrowns
From salwar suits and sarees being the norm until the 90s, Indian consumers have, over the years, adopted various styles including jeans, Indo-western, fusion wear, casual wear, and more.
One of the categories garnering popularity is urban ethnic fashion, and Lifestyle is on a mission to ace this trend. The Gurugram-based company was founded in 2016 by the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Delhi alumni, Udita Bansal.
trueBrowns’ USP lies in it being a size-inclusive brand. From 2XS to 6XL, it offers a range of clothes including blouses, kurta sets, sarees, dresses, gowns, jacket sets and more. The brand goes beyond 6XL and makes up to 10XL as well on special orders. The starting price for the clothes is from Rs 1,000 onwards.
About 80 percent of its clothes are manufactured in-house while the rest are outsourced from different parts of the country. trueBrowns was started with an initial capital of Rs 20 lakh amassed from Udita's savings.
This week, SMBStory spoke to Udita to understand the opportunity it found in this market and how it
has grown in the last five years.
Edited by Kanishk Singh