Sequoia Backed Food Chain Startup Faaso's Offers “Entrepreneur in Residence” Program

Faaso's is “Fresh and Desi wraps delivered in super-quick time. No other unnecessary frills” as described by Jaydeep, one of the founding members. Jaydeep and Kallol, both MBA graduates from IIM and INSEAD respectively along with Biswanath and Siddhartha founded Faasos in 2003. Having worked for companies like McKinsey and Bosche and not being satisfied, they found an opening in the food space and started up. Desi food with western concepts of hygiene and service; Faaso’s is also the World’s first restaurant to take orders on Twitter!The Growth Story:

What started out with a single outlet in Pune, Faaso's now has 18 outlets spread across Pune and Mumabi. They plan to set up 40 more stores in Mumbai before moving on to Bangalore, NCR and Hyderabad. They currently have 150 employees including managers, kitchen staff and delivery boys. The big news is that they’re looking to expand aggressively and for this they’ve come up with an “Entrepreneur in Residence” Program.

The program:

The program as described by Jaydeep, "will develop young entrepreneurs each of whom will take care of 15-20 outlets to start with and hopefully in the process will get enough learning to start their own ventures." The participant will have the full responsibility of handling a bunch of stores and this has to be one of the best and steepest learning curve for any entrepreneur. And the good thing is that anyone with a spring in the step and an entrepreneurial bug can get in touch with them for the position.

A few things they desire are:

1) A self-starter/entrepreneurial nature. People who work on instructions won’t excel.

2) Integrity.

3) Love for the customers.

Some more info about Faaso's:

It took Faaso's two years to become profitable, but today each of their outlets is profitable within the first 3-5 months and the capital pay back is about a year. Each outlet caters to more than 5000 customers a month. Skilled manpower and corporate laws (it takes six licenses to setup a restaurant) are the two biggest obstacles Faasos faces today and they’re trying to solve the former issue through more programs like the one mentioned above.

Funding:

Faasos received 8 Lakhs of seed capital in 2004 and this year Sequoia Capital has invested in them.

Brownie points:

Faasos regularly sends out personalized hand written letters to their customers with surprise gifts.

They have the "not satisfied, don't pay" policy. All employees are empowered to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy.

More about them at www.faasos.com. And if you're in Pune or Mumbai, do tweet @faasos to get your food!

- Jubin Mehta