focused on what they want out of life
and what they want to do ahead I want to
give you an anecdote about how it
happened for me so back in my time you
had two choices you could do engineering
or medical or the resident matter the
cut-offs were believe me around 92% er
for the medical side so I said hey I can
do medical but I had to add my 11
standard marks and my 12 standard marks
to reach 92 so that was not happening I
got into pharmacy pharmacy B Pharma and
chemistry was my favorite subject number
one one two so there it went
I had a few weeks of nice pharmacy
lectures I don’t absolutely remember and
then came this letter saying that I had
got admission into hotel management I
took the next train to back to Bombay
and I got myself admitted to hotel
management I knew very little about the
industry but it was a three years of
blissful experience we used to actually
study during the day and work during the
evenings we were supposed to the college
was till four o’clock in the evening we
were sent to hotels to work as a waiter
I used to earn 25 rupees every evening
princely sum at that point and trust me
that that really sets the bar for hard
work and trust you it sets you up for
life so that’s my that’s my take on
future don’t worry about what you’ve
decided it might change sometime let it
go you will find your way you will find
your thing to do in your life and you
will do well no matter what so let it go
okay so today I’m going to take you
through my personal journey of taste and
how what we eat is evolving how many of
you want to become an entrepreneur Wow
some of the speakers – that’s nice super
so here are the 3 p’s that define my
journey as an entrepreneur perils
pressure and trust me a lot of pleasure
it started I think when I was at the Taj
I was about 25 years old and I was given
the responsibility to set up a whole new
division for them and I think this
experience planted the first seeds of
entrepreneurship for me Steve Jobs once
said stay hungry stay foolish and
foolish I was I chucked up my job at the
Taj and I said I’m going to start a
business or nowadays it’s called a
startup very fashionable so I took the
plunge I had no money no long-term plan
I had no projections no market surveys
but just a conviction that people wanted
to eat good food the kind I was already
cooking at the hotels but at a value so
that’s what I did for about 10 years and
trust me I never had time to go and do
an MBA and I think that ten years was
like an MBA for me practically I learned
marketing finance taxes economics
strategy handling government servants
everything together so a success grew I
became hungrier and more foolish I
opened two more companies I was having a
lot of fun and then I sold them I did it
again a few years ago now as part of the
pure Otto’s group that I am in now I set
up a subsidiary for them for India and
South Asia
it was a greenfield project from the
ground up
so I had complete freedom within of
course the scope of the group to do what
I wanted how I wanted to bring it up I
got a lot of freedom from the group and
this what I call is intrapreneurship
that you work within the group and yet
you are so independent as an
entrepreneur very few companies give you
so all those of you who raised your
hands want to become an entrepreneur
don’t worry about people saying about
the demographics of India or it’s the
best time in India to do things or the
fact that the VCS are ready to fund you
don’t worry about that to be an
entrepreneur
I think you need two things passion for
an idea and the stupidity to believe
that the actual the idea will actually
[Applause]
so when we speak of fashion let me tell
you about my first day at work so I like
I told you I went to work at a five-star
hotel and here I was with illusions of
grandeur thinking that I would be
cooking for celebrities and I found
myself in this very hot and steamy
kitchen literally dropped into hot oil
and given a bag of onions and a very
sharp knife to slice them so slice I did
my finger I drew blood and they say it’s
a good omen but I think it was a sign of
what a life of a chef is through my
years in the hotel industry both at ITC
another dodge I came to know the ten
things they never told you about being a
chef so first you will abuse cigarettes
grass alcohol and Red Bull not in that
order you will get physical injuries
including butt rash it’s Google it is
there you will be angry and you will
abuse like a sailor and you will fall in
love with your job trying to great team
around me within the group in Mumbai who
work on the cornerstone of integrity and
the kind of decisions we take based on
integrity are no less I will give you
two small examples one is that we do not
hire from competition at all to that we
use the safest of ingredients now I
don’t know if you read in the paper some
months ago there was a question about a
product called bromide bromide causes
cancer it’s a carcinogenic product and
it has been banned in many countries but
still available to use in many many
other countries including India
as a company we had banned it within our
company from years we said we will not
use it we will lose market share we will
lose the market we will not feed it to
our customers so that’s the kind of
strong commitments that you can make
basis ethics sustainability now we owe
it to the communities in which we work
for them to have a sustainable future I
often go and meet customers and when I
ask them what are your problems they say
my biggest problem is that I cannot get
skilled manpower on the other hand I see
many underprivileged kids coming out of
schools colleges without resources
without any skill sets to go ahead in
life so I said what can we do about it
so we opened the bakery school it was
three years ago and I’m happy to say
that some of the students are now in the
industry earning as much as their
parents so it gives you a lot of
satisfaction another example of
sustainability is why Akua so we grow
also part of the thing is to source
cocoa for chocolate and we help farmers
in Ivory Coast and Vietnam to help them
earn better by growing better quality
cocoa and also building a sustainable
supply chain let me show you a video on
that so we are laying in to a minute air
my monkey Rhoda Beatrice
[Music]
I can you see the motion detector in the
Sun I see detective diamond rewarding
part of Asian population would much
sooner did the treatment an hour not
gonna do
that does my family
[Music]
come play by hanging on yeah and that
the kingdom guy who throw the punch and
God but cactus tinium disappear magic on
Shia Mathew he’s really satisfying I’ve
been to the farms there and I met
exactly this person who you see in the
Vietnam video I’ve sat and had food with
his family they are such a happy lot
such a happy lot so to grow one must
always continue to learn and when I
became a CEO I felt I needed to learn
more to keep up with a very fast
changing world and like I told you I
never did my MBA so I went back to
INSEAD everybody knows INSEAD yeah it’s
one of the best business schools in the
world and I went back there for a year
with some of the world’s best professors
and the teaching was based on cutting
edge research
it was totally case study based it was
an amazing year that I spent there and
now that I’m back I I feel I’m so much
better equipped to take on the world so
do do keep learning as you go ahead in
life do keep learning I also try to keep
this culture of learning through our
company I try to inculcate it in
whatever we do one of the things we do
is have an education assistance for a
lot of people who want to study further
while they’re working
we also have a very well stocked of his
library as a group we have an online
platform called the paratus University
which will help you to take courses
technical sales otherwise everything we
do seminars and employees for customers
as well every month we have a center of
excellence that we call the Innovation
Center
we have to in India where we conduct
training and ideas we give training to
customers and we help them with ideas to
help them be more successful in their
businesses and they really appreciate
so I believe that people should grow
from within as well we have many
examples of passionate people like an
office boy or a receptionist that I had
who’s continuing to learn while they are
working and have reached spectacular
something on innovation I’ll take you
back to again my first job so when I
joined IDC IDC was trying to find a
niche it was a new chain at that time it
was trying to find a niche in the very
competitive hotel industry against two
very large other chains and they used
food as an emotional bond to connect
with the customers they built brands
like the bukhara like the dumb books
duction very very blue ocean products
you know something which nobody had done
before I’m happy to recall my days when
I worked with chef India’s Qureshi a
very typical old-world chef and got him
to actually impart or part with his
family secret recipes I am still in
touch with him on everyday basis now in
fact he was the first chef to be awarded
a bud mystery this year so let’s talk a
bit about that was tradition and let’s
now talk about innovation and this is
from a research that we’ve been doing
across the world and specifically in
India also so some of the trends that
you’ve seen are from that research that
we’ve done we see that people are eating
very differently you know the crowd the
people are getting younger urbanization
is
increasing there is more and more
nuclear families building up consumers
more new flavors they want new concepts
they want new ideas and at the same time
they recall the taste of the food made
at home and often people choose to
balance these two let’s see how they do
that
so they embrace the change in three
different ways one is adaptation so you
have a nice authentic pasta dish in
which you add a touch of spice just to
suit your palate on the other side you
can have a simulation where you keep the
food original and you borrow from other
cultures say having a very nice thin
crust pizza with a nice Italian tomato
sauce and loaded with mozzarella cheese
and adding chicken tikka on the top or
or you could have a complete fusion yeah
in integration any of you tried a
Chinese dosa yeah
so that’s integration combining two
whole cultures making them clash
together so further in innovation mixing
ingredients and flavors has a deep
science called food pairing behind it
okay now each of you received the boxes
and I think you’ve been very patient
enough and you deserve the chocolate
that is inside so please go ahead and
Kyle you didn’t get one okay they’ll get
you another box there’s lots of boxes
behind somebody will are there’s another
one can you tell me what it contains
what does the chocolate in the filling
what does it contain can somebody tell
me any guesses coconut coffee that’s
good coffee is one of them yes you will
not be able to guess the other two it’s
a the chocolate is from Costa Rica okay
it’s a single origin Costa Rica and it
has a filling made of coffee mushrooms
and olive oil yes let me tell you how
this works so food is a complex story it
revolves around our five senses right so
sight and hearing the the colors that we
see the crunchiness that we feel make up
the perception of the food but it’s
actually the taste the touch and the
smell which really make up the the main
experience taste as we know is made up
of five elements sweet salty sour bitter
and umami smell is more complex it’s
possible that humans can detect up to
ten thousand different orders 80% of
what we taste is actually the aroma so
we do aroma profiling using a method
called GC mass technology say on a
product like this strawberry so we do
this
a logarithm so we break it up and the
strawberry contains many the many
different flavors only a few are really
detectable by us like cheesy of fruity
or green and through further techniques
and using algorithms we match profiles
of various other foods and drinks with a
strawberry which leads to pairing
there’s a technique behind it and this
helps to build a whole different bouquet
of flavors this is a website called food
pairing dot-com try to visit it and
you’ll really enjoy it ah Dominic
Dominic person is a very passionate
chocolatier he runs a shop called
chocolate line in Belgium in a shop you
can find very different flavours like
cigar smoke leather or chili
he is also redefining how to consume
chocolate normally you would eat it he
teaches us to sniff it through the nose
shoot the chocolate into your brain and
fill your head with chocolate enos so he
[Applause]
he sells this shooter with chocolates in
different flavors and you put it there
and you snap it and it goes straight up
your nose it’s amazing
in India we refer to innovation as
indo-asian and we try to adapt various
products to the Indian tastes I brought
along a masala chai Rusk for you to
taste as well so please go ahead many of
you must have tasted samosa in a bun
right have you tasted gulab jamun in a
bun have you tasted ice cream in a bun
yeah so that’s that’s a bit of
innovation around well that’s just for
fun so finally all this comes down to
customer service why should we look at
customer service we see that competitive
intensity is increasing market leaders
are losing their position very fast
you’ve seen what happened to Nokia of
blackberry customers are less loyal to
brands for example the car industry now
you can just about change your car every
other day and you’re not loyal to one
brand and the return on assets is
declining so success comes to companies
it was 12th of March 1993 I was working
at the Xerox Sheraton Mumbai when a bomb
blast ripped through the hotel it took
us six minutes to bring all the guests
Mumbai had complete riots going on
everything was shot we could not go home
we stayed in the hotel for two full
weeks working 24/7 for our customers for
the guests that were there till the last
so that’s
thank you that’s what you do for your
customers truly from the heart and we
carry this even on our visiting card so
everyone in our company has customer
service associate written on their
visiting cards along with their other
designations because we are all customer
service associates it shows our
commitment to the customer in fact we go
an extra mile to ensure that all our
systems our processes in the company are
aligned so that the salesperson when he
is meeting the customer is fully
empowered to take a decision so we seek
customer centricity in a different way
in food we see a trend called meal
mobility this is the last trend I will
speak about is called food on the go we
know that eating food is changing we
were eating three meals a day at times
three set meals almost always at home
sometimes and from there we now eat
anywhere and everywhere we go to the
mall weed we go to the airports we eat
we eating in the flight we eating in the
stations and we are eating often but we
are also eating smaller portions so
customers we’ve had customers adapt
their menus accordingly yeah I’ll show
you some of the pictures food is also
going mobile it’s about convenience on
the go small portions sometimes on a
pocket sandwiches becoming very popular
and there if you see they are sealed so
that the filling doesn’t come out
because often you’re eating stuff like
that with one hand because now in the
other hand there’s always a mobile phone
we are true that’s the way we’ve adapted
our eating now and finally the most
important quality every person I believe
in the company is responsible for
delivering quality customers are
attaching more and more importance to
the quality of the food that they eat
which involves taste health nutrition
so I recall again my olden days when I
had my business that was one of my cafes
I must have been doing something right
in my businesses to bring many
appreciative customers to me send week
Iglesias Shaggy died straits Mark
Knopfler from dire straits and Ryan
Adams Shakira didn’t allow me to take
pictures with her
so I hope I’ve given you a peek into the
future of food my advice to you travel
often eat well I visited approximately
26 countries and it’s helped me meet a
lot of new people and experience
cultures through food thank you [Applause]