Taleem o Trabiyat in association with TiE Mumbai with the help of NMIMS University organized this workshop where opening key note was given by Maharashtra Chief Minister followed by Venky Iyer, Founder and CEO – GolivadaPav Ltd, which turned out to be one of the most interesting and energetic speeches I have ever heard.

Session kicks off with Shri Zafar Sareshwala, Chancellor, Maulana Azad National Urdu University stressing on the importance of holistic education for students and the importance of Taleem o Trabiyat, for which the key deliverable is skill development in students where he stresses on how India could be in the danger of having the youngest average population in age but wouldn’t be skillful enough to do real value addition, so this Trabiyat movement which started just for Muslim community is now open to everyone and recently entrepreneurship has been one of the things that they are trying to inculcate in the minds of young children.

Followed by the inspirational rags to riches story of Hanmant Ramdas Gaikwad, MD of Bharat Vikas Group (BVG Group), talks about how he build his company on the foundation of delivering excellence in every opportunity he was given, Hanmant narrates a story on how he saved Rs 2 Crore for TELCO (now Tata Motors) by finding a way to use old materials lying as scrap for years. His boss was very happy and asks him what reward he wants, for which he says “My village people were searching for jobs and asked if he could employ them”, where they were eventually employed into housekeeping which he says laid the foundation of Bharat Vikas Trust getting its first job with Tata Motors. And his excellent work lead to contracts for housekeeping, gardening, electrical and mechanical departments.

At this point he brought in mechanization and put technology with innovation into use and delivered excellent work. Word started to spread and reputation started to build which brought in more contracts of housekeeping, BVG got 10 more clients just from word of mouth and the rest is history, BVG moved onto grab contracts from Parliament, Prime Minister’s residence, Supreme Court and Rastrapati Bhavan pushing to become a Rs 2000 Crore Turnover company.

HARDWORK, EXCELLENCE IN WORK and VALUE ADDITION TO COUNTRY is what he says are the key things for his success.

Then the much awaited chief minister addresses the gathering, he says being entrepreneurial gives us the opportunity to become job givers rather than job seekers. He stresses on how the work of Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Limited (MUDRA), helped boost entrepreneurial spirit in India. (Financial Year: 2016 -17, No.of PMMY Loans sanctioned: 39701047, Amount sanctioned: Rs 137449.27 crore, Amount Disbursed: Rs 148918.37 Crore through MUDRA). He says these are the exciting times because we are on the cusp of becoming completely digital in few years. He says entrepreneurship is just about thinking to do anything differently where he remembers a Ganesh Idol being made where you can pour water on it and grow a plant rather than submerging it in the sea finally. He stresses on how PM Fellowship and CM Fellowship scheme are at the aid to the youngsters sitting in the audience who are wanting to pursue education. ‘Thank you, Jai Hind, Jai Maharashtra’ and the sound of joined hands filled the auditorium.

Then came in a person with a PPT and here I was thinking noooo and he asked us to clap every 3 minutes to keep the energy levels high stating ‘If one can’t even clap, how can he work hard’, all of it just sounded weird but I was blown away for the next 45 minutes. The man is Venkatesh Iyer, Co-founder of Goli Vada Pav, which is an Indian ethnic fast food restaurant chain originated from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It was founded in 2004 as a vadapav restaurant by Venkatesh Iyer and Shivadas Menon. Today, Goli Vada Pav has 300 stores in 100 cities across 20 states of India. The expanse is from Gorakhpur in North to Calicut in South and Porbandar in West to Kolkata in East. The Basket of products include varieties of vadapav, vada rolls, currys pavs and desserts. It is positioned as an alternative to traditional fast food and rivals the conventional burger.

He starts off by quoting Alchemist,”And, when you want something, All the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” He says number one on his list is Inspiration which gives momentum for building a company where he talks about a seagull which wants to full as high as an eagle where it climbs and jumps from top of a mountain to just get pushed back to the shore failing, where he says one just got to take that giant leap to see what they are capable of.

Number two on his list is the purpose what contribution to society is the company/ individual making. He wants to put vadapav against burgers and pizzas. The general statement that he keeps hearing all the time is, ”Venky you may not defeat burger but you will definitely become a beggar” but he believed that the food which addresses the bottom of the pyramid wouldn’t disappoint him, Number 3 on the list is not just wealth creation but wealth distribution, Number 4 create a brand which falls under the category of daily consumption.

He says one of the key success factors relies on your MIND2MARKET approach and he stresses also on the importance of pilot testing, which they did in Kalina because of the average earning capability of an individual and he says entrepreneur should be a tough nut. Once kalina was a big hit they started expanding but something was not working out and he thought WASTAGE, PILFERAGE and STANDARDIZATION were the key issues. Coming with rich experience in the field of corporate finance and good contacts, he just happened to pitch this problem to CEO of Instafood and in no time Venky found the solution through Instafood, where he started batch making and with technology intervention(X Ray) he solved the problem.

At this point they tied up with Aarey Milk Booths to sell vadapav in their outlets but that turned out to be compete disaster with a huge political turmoil and took the front pages and prime times but he sees it as 25 crores worth of Prime time free marketing and nearly 5000 enquires came in wanting to know what is that they do. Once side he is expanding business and on other side he is attending cases in courts but he says that if it weren’t for not working with Aarey, Golivadapav wouldn’t be what they are today. This whole process makes him say, “MISTAKES BECOME BEAUTIFUL TOO”. Barter system is what he believed in, doing movie promotion on vadapav pamphlets for free but Hero – Heroine meeting is to be shot at one of the outlets. Jugaad Marketing is what came to his rescue. In exchange for 100 trucks letting 100 Pepsi refrigerators put up in his outlets and the examples continue eventually the journey of his company became a Case study at Business schools, Bloomberg made a documentary and Goli Vada Pav earned its own pages in the history, reflecting their tagline ‘Vada Pav No 1’.