Founders Unfiltered Ep41:

Jaydeep grew up in a Bengali household that loved food. While working in Pune, he missed the Kathi rolls he loved growing up and decided to start a restaurant as a side project. The two launched @Faasos, a restaurant serving rolls, and outsourced its operations.

Jaydeep then went to pursue his MBA at INSEAD and landed a job at McKinsey London. After 5 years, he returned to India and had to choose between joining the firm’s rapidly growing India office or growing Faasos.

Faasos started from a single restaurant in Pune and eventually expanded to 10 across Mumbai and Bangalore. It offered doorstep delivery, a novel concept back in the day! In spite of the customer love, Faasos struggled to make unit economics work due to the high cost of real estate a common problem for Indian restaurants.

A shift in strategy was driven by a customer survey insight 74% of customers had never visited a Faasos restaurant! This epiphany led them to adopt a 'delivery only' model and cut down costs. Rebel Foods eventually pioneered the concept of 'cloud kitchens' a single physical kitchen serving as multiple brands.

Today, Rebel Foods is the leading internet restaurant company globally with 15+ brands and 3500+ restaurants across 10 countries.

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About the Hosts :
Aviral Bhatnagar is a VC at Venture Highway and is the Founder of A Junior VC. He started the A Junior VC Newsletter in 2018 after observing whitespace in conversations in the Indian Venture ecosystem. He completed his B. Tech from IIT Bombay and MBA from IIM Ahmedabad.

Mazin Biviji is a Product Owner at Agoda and a founding member of A Junior VC. He previously worked at Deloitte as a Senior Consultant. He completed his MSE and BSE from the University of Michigan and his MBA from INSEAD.

Join us at https://ajuniorvc.com/community/ to be a part of an exclusive community and grab the opportunity to question and hear our guests live every Sunday.

Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
01:08 Early Days
04:19 The Story Of Double MBA!
09:36 The Revival Of Faasos
12:58 Early Days Of Faasos
19:20 The Uniqueness Of Food Industry
22:29 Challenges In The Food Industry
30:40 How To Become The First Ideator?
39:25 Swiggy & Zomato Cannot Become Rebel
43:00 Writing Your Thoughts Helps!
46:27 Writing In Public
47:53 Unfiltered Feedback
51:02 Outro