When entrepreneurs bite off more than they can chew

Narendra Pasuparthy, CEO of Nandu's Chicken, came back from the US to join his family poultry business 10 years ago. The Nanda Group is a Rs 500-crore company that was established by his family in 1963. Nandu's Chicken is a new entity in the group started by Narendra in 2016 tasked with bringing fresh quality meat which is 100 % traceable and delivered directly to the consumer. From developing chicken feed to parent breeding to hatcheries, the group is an end-to-end solution which puts it in an enviable position. They control the quality of their products by ensuring complete transparency. Narendra says the only missing link in their business was the retail business, which Nandu's will help complete.

Narendra says his main motivation to join the family business was to see how he could touch lives by ensuring that the meat that they produced was of top quality without the use of harmful antibiotics and hormones. He says the entire supply chain is so fragmented that there is no way a consumer can trace back where the meat came from and whether it was processed in hygienic conditions.

The company’s entire supply chain is now tech-enabled, and if a customer comes back with a complaint, they can investigate it back to the parent flock.

Nandu’s follows an omnichannel strategy and has its own retail outlets along with the convenience of ordering online. Since it was set up in 2016, Nandu’s Chicken has clocked a revenue of Rs 10 crore and hopes to achieve Rs 25 crore by next year.

With so much going on, a mere mortal may feel they have bitten off more than they can chew. But for entrepreneurs, there's no such thing. No matter how full their plate, they manage to polish it off. As popular wisdom goes, 'stay hungry, stay ahead.'