From a small 200 square meter outlet in Mumbai, the brand of Naturals Ice Creams today has turned into a Rs 300 crore empire. And behind this incredible success is the incredible journey of its founder Raghunandan Srinivas Kamath. Originally from Karnataka’s Mangalore, Kamath was the youngest of seven siblings. His mother was a homemaker and his father was a fruit vendor. The family also owned an acre of land where they cultivated some fruits. In his childhood, Kamath accompanied his father to fields and markets to sell the fruit and during the process. learned the art to spot quality ripened fruits.
According to thebetterindia.com, when Kamath was 14, his family moved to Mumbai (Bombay back then). Here, he joined a new school but after failing to pass his board exams twice, he had to drop out of school and join his eldest brother’s business. Kamath’s brother ran a South Indian eatery ‘Gokul Refreshments’ where he also sold homemade ice creams to the customers. Kamath first suggested the idea of using fruit-based ice cream flavours at the shop but this ambitious plan was not entertained by others in the family.
But soon, the eatery business had a split and a share of the restaurant went to Kamath. This was his chance to pursue his idea of selling different flavours of ice cream. So, with the Rs 3,50,000he received after the split, Kamath began Naturalswith six staff members. He also used to sell pav bhaji in his shop.
Though the idea of selling fruit flavour ice creams in a maker where everyone was selling vanilla and chocolate seemed risky, Kamath managed to sell nearly a thousand on the very first weekend of the shop opening.
Kamath clocked up a revenue of Rs 5,00,000 in the very first year and later dropped selling pav bhaji and focused solely on ice creams. And there has been no looking back ever since. The company slowly moved to the use of machines to scale up their output and today has over 135 outlets across the country.
Naturals operate from its 3-decade old factory in Kandivali that process milk supply from Nashik and fruit supply from different parts of the country, to give innovative and delicious ice cream flavours.
At a time, when business success stories are complicated with complex jargon, Kamath’s story is a reminder is that all you need is the ability to work hard and keep things simple.
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