Recipe For Financial Freedom

Abrush, a bucket and an idea came together. Sandeep Gajakas knew it was an inflammable mixture. He was on to something. He would start a laundry service for shoes. His father did not like it, but Gajakas, 26 then, was beyond being dissuaded. The boy who has been a fashion choreographer, event manager and club-level football player, wanted a way out of the rat race his friends were ailing from. Sandeep was working in a call centre when the idea struck him. He quit his job and started distributing handbills asking people who wanted to clean their sports shoes to contact him. The response was tremendous. The Andheri resident would get calls from all corners of Mumbai. He would then run to their houses, get the shoes, scrub them clean in his bathroom and deliver them for Rs 100 a pair.

That was in 2004. Today, Sandeep is 28 and owns a business called The Shoe Laundry. He doesn’t need to wash Keds anymore. Nine boys trained by him do that now and they follow his ten-step cleaning procedure which involves everything from tagging to drying and even repairs. He has even tied up with the dealers of Reebok and Adidas for after-sales services. Sandeep has raised the price per pair by Rs 20, but there is so much demand that he is saying no to corporates who want tie-ups. He has reached a state where he uncomfortably says that he cannot disclose his turnover. He simply says, “I make 40% profit.” People like Sandeep are mushrooming all over the country. In a way, they have arrived at the right time. If an idea is good, people are willing to spend.

No one in India really thought cleaning windows could be a business until Bangalore’s Suhag Khemlani introduced her spidermen — men who use mountaineering equipment to abseil down a building and clean. The director of India’s only façade cleaning company, Technoclean India Private Limited, Khemlani thought of the idea when she attended a training course by UK’s International Rope Access Training Association. She wanted to assist her father who was in the business of selling façade cleaning equipment. In the UK, she discovered that window cleaning was an established industry. For the idea to work in India, she knew the first step was to “change the mindsets of Indians.” But 29-year-old Khemlani, the spiderwoman who has cleaned the 47th floor façade of the BBC building in London, took up the challenge and along with her father formed a joint venture with the UK façade cleaning giant, OCS. Technoclean, that now has branches in Pune, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, boasts of a growth rate of 60%.

The ideas of these entrepreneurs may seem outlandish but they execute them in very conventional ways. They begin by researching the market. Wasiff Khan, 27, who runs Home-Care, a homecooked food delivery service for pet dogs, began by posing as a market researcher for a company that did not exist at that time. From his surveys he learnt that though there were branded cereals and processed foods available, there was a strong need for fresh food. And Home-Care was born in 2004

Khan would cook rice, vegetables and meat with “no salt or spice”, and try the samples on his friends’ dogs. When he saw that it worked, he bought a bicycle, hired an assistant and ran a local delivery service in Bandra. He displayed his cell number on a box behind the bicycle. Since then he has been busy. He has nine workers today who race around Mumbai in scooters that resemble pizza delivery vehicles. The meals that are divided into two categories — regular and premium — cost anywhere between Rs 30 and Rs 120. Khan now has over 500 clients including top politicians and film stars.

The goal of these young offbeat entrepreneurs who do almost every task that their staff does, is to see a seed of their idea grow. After achieving that they get obsessed with making their enterprise larger. They are getting used to media interviews, MBA projects and blog attention. Sandeep Gajakas, who has even received an on-air marriage proposal during an interview, has now learnt to deal with questions about the secret of his success. “I just wash shoes,” he says and that’s all there is to it.

Source: Times of India Jan 22 2007