As part of our quest to identify and share some of the meaningful stories from the startup world, this week we invited yet another passionate young entrepreneur Yash Batra for an interview with us. He is Founder and CEO at GARNICHE. His food startup Garniche offers a premium home dining experience at an affordable price and is solving all of the major problems. Let’s read more about his journey and advice for those aspiring!
Excerpts from our exclusive Interview with Yash:
Talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur started, please;
I am a 2018 computer science graduate and pursued engineering from Bharati Vidyapeeth College Of Engineering in Delhi. I was a passionate individual about food from the beginning and always aspired to solve problems that we face in everyday life.
There is a small story behind the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. I went with my friends to Goa and we were in a Pub. That pub had one unique thing – it didn’t have any waiters/servers/managers/cash counters, So how did that pub work? They had a tab embedded in the tables and once you place the order a chef from the kitchen comes with the dishes in his hand and serves the food.
The idea made sense when I started to read about the food industry in my 3rd year of college. There are some Big problems that Garniche today solves.
And here we are Garniche – A premium home dining experience at home comfort at an affordable price and solving all of the problems from food quality to hygiene in the simplest way of professionals chef with over 6+ years of at least experience cooking in your kitchen with all the fresh ingredients brought by him and also cleans up the kitchen before the chef leaves.
Why food? When did you start something like this?
To be honest I love food and exploring new places. In my 4 years of college, it was a monthly routine to take a day off from college and visit places that haven’t been explored with my laptop and a small diary and learn about those special dishes. From Big boy parantha of Throttle Throttle to Butter of Chicken of Garam Dharam, From Dahi Bhalle of Chandni Chawk to Galuati Kebabs of Rajinder Da Dhaba and that exploration helped me later to plan and Launch Garniche’s First menu.
How has your entrepreneurial journey been so far?
We have received love way more than that I expected. I still remember in our initial days. I used to go with the chef to the customer’s home. Chef used to cook and I used to serve them.
The main motive behind it was to know how my customers are feeling and reacting while having the food experience which gave me great insights to what customers want and today we have 90% orders from repeat customers & word of mouth by the customers
How far has Chef on demand, home-delivered succeeded in wooing Indians, esp Delhiites?
It was very tough as we were creating new marketing. I still remember our first month when we just served 2 orders in a complete month. From two orders a month to now serving multiple orders in a day it’s been a humble beginning of serving 3000+ people in our first year of operations.
What is the one thing that moves you and you feel very strongly about? What motivates you to be the best you can be?
Garniche was found with the vision to bring the finest and quality food back in the customer’s home comfort and when I see the chefs and sales or the operations team going extra mile for customer satisfaction makes me believe that the life is never about reaching the destination and achieving that success it’s about this beautiful journey and process towards the goal.
Why entrepreneurship over a corporate career after college?
For me, the college was never about getting a job or being placed in a Fortune 500 company. For me, college was 4 years of life that were given to me to explore each and every aspect of my life and experiment with what I truly want to do in the future. From painting to modeling to event management to how to build technology I tried and experienced every possible thing. This not only helped me look into different aspects but also helped me build leadership qualities in me
I chose entrepreneurship because I always wanted to make an impact. I have always been intrigued by entrepreneurship and read success stories of all the successful entrepreneurs. It’s fascinating how you build something from scratch to build an empire around it and not everyone can do it. It takes a lot of courage, planning, perseverance, hard work, teamwork, combined with good strategy & execution skills.
How is your product different from traditional products? Tell us more about your product and your startup’s journey this far?
With Garniche we aim to revolutionize how individuals have their food at home. It’s about having a great meal, freshly cooked, right in front of you by the best in class chefs, and without you stepping out of your home. We started in November 2018 and have served over 3000+ people in our journey so far including many HNI’s, celebrities as well.
We also became the first-ever Indian startup to reach 100+ authentic google reviews with a 5star rating.”
The vision that we have is that in 5 years in the future people will focus more on creating beautiful memories by spending time with family, and be more productive in their work as they have Garniche to take care of their food.
Please share with us some of the challenges you faced in your journey;
There were many big challenges as to how to reach out to our customers, how to make them try our services, setting up standards of processes were a few top ones and the biggest of them all was to get the very first person on board. It took me 60 interviews before I could find the ideal team member with whom the foundations of Garniche were laid.
What is your Business Mantra: Money or Emotions?
I would say Discipline and Ethics do come first for me. A lot of people get into the business line to make money where emotions turn meaningless. But if you do what your heart wants, money follows and people always say there is no room for emotions in business. Thriving to be the best in what you do is the biggest mantra to be successful
We would love to know your advice for all those starting as an aspiring entrepreneur?
I do have a suggestion that everyone should know. You have plenty and plenty of time to fail and you should fail faster and more often and implement those learnings in the next iteration so that someday you invent a fool-proof product. No one teaches a better lesson as a failure does. If life gets tough while you are on the journey, have faith that better things are on their way.
People Also Read: Meet Anubhav Bhatnagar – Founder at Kitchen D’lite
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BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
