Radhika Gupta's First Business Might Not Be An Easy Guess
Gupta's story did not start with Edelweiss, but with this organic idea that she had in college when she was 20 years old.
Not all successful business ventures are the result of stunning ideas taking off. More often than not, success comes after a variety of tough times, lessons learnt, and failing forward.
Radhika Gupta's first business venture was a restaurant out of a dorm. Much before she became the chief executive officer of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, Gupta's first ever business was born out of sheer need — home-cooked food.
"At that point, you either eat college pizza at 10 in the night. Or there was bad Indian food or bad naan and what they call saag paneer with tikka masala in the US," she said. When not-the-best food was the only food available, Gupta saw an opportunity to build something.
So along with a friend, she decided on a pickup system for home-style food. This was the first venture she ever started, and it was definitely not a cakewalk.
"I did not know how to cook, so I would call my mom every night for recipes and I would make 100 rotis a day," Gupta recalled.
The venture was named "Mirch Madness" after March Madness in the US, said Gupta, also the author of Mango Millionaire.
"I was studying two degrees, cooking from 10 to 12 and doing the dishes after 12," she said. The tough beginnings of the current Shark in Shark Tank India definitely paid off in the long-term perspective.
"My husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, would say I came to class the next day smelling like garam masala," Gupta recalled with a grin. Known for her food analogies for investing, her first venture blended both her interests.
