Husband-wife duo Shikhar Veer Singh and Nidhi Singh sold their flat to build their dream business, SAMOSA SINGH.
We interviewed Nidhi Singh and were truly inspired by her journey. Here's an exclusive feature of Nidhi Singh, co-founder of Samosa Singh.
Formal education and Career –
Nidhi Singh was brought up in a small town called Karnal in Haryana. She belongs to a family of working individuals. Her dad is a lawyer, so is her sister and her mother is a principal. She got married into another beautiful nuclear family later who had always been in the defense and service class. But, she and her husband Shikhar Veer, are both biotechnologists. She was in the marketing side of healthcare. Her husband was working in India’s largest biotech company, Biocon.
They were passionate about creating something of their own from the very beginning. They saw a huge unmet need in the market when it comes to Indian street food. They always had a vision of building something of their own so they both quit their jobs and got the company incorporated with nothing more than a dream and passion.
Brief on the start-up – Samosa Singh
They started with the idea of organizing Indian street food. There were many players around on burgers, pizzas and even biriyani. After market research in major cities, they realized that samosas were one of the most loved products but there was nothing organized there. They wanted to build a brand around samosas similar to what McDonald’s has done for burgers or what Domino’s had done for pizza.
This idea stemmed into a business in a bootstrap manner entirely with their own investments with their savings.
They started working into the B2B space working with airlines, multiplex industries, big corporations and cafes.
How they stand out-
The unique thing about their start-up is that they really mastered the art of making samosas. It is a highly automated process. The most important aspect of a samosa is the sheeting of the dough and the filling that goes inside it. The most differentiating factor for them is their product. Even if you look at the first samosa or the hundredth one that is made for the day, they all have the same consistency. They have similar thickness to the brass and the same filling. They replicate the process of hand holding the samosas so as not to alter the taste and texture of them.
Because of this, they were able to get into the aviation and multiplex industry.
Future plans -
As a B2B player, when COVID hit, their business was in complete shock as they were primarily into airlines and multiplexes. Overnight, their entire business became zero. But then, they realized that there was a huge demand online. People continued to order from their three outlets which were in Bangalore. Now, they have expanded into several other cities like Hyderabad, Bombay, Pune and in many smaller cities. From zero revenue they scaled it up to 50 locations.
From next year they’ll be venturing into physical stores.
Challenges -
The most challenging part for them when they started out was getting the clients. But once they had that, their next challenge was on how to streamline the process to make sure that their first samosa and their 10,000th one had the same consistency. The next big challenge for them was to build something of a culture within the start-up with a team that trusts their ideologies. Now, their team has become their biggest strength.
Overcoming Failures -
When they first started out, they considered every single street vendor to be their competition. They had to build a product that maintained consistency throughout. Later, during the pandemic, their entire business went under overnight. Instead of giving up, they worked on expanding online. They acquired the required permissions to create more locations for online deliveries. They created another strong team in house that worked on creating a certain algorithm that will be able to identify the best locations to open the outlets that do online deliveries.
There were always challenges but they worked around the challenges to make it their strength.
When they first started out, they couldn’t even do 200 samosas in a day that had the same consistency. Now, they have the capacity to roll out 1 lakh samosas in a day.
Source of inspiration -
Nidhi Singh believes that inspiration is all around. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact source but she tried to find it in everything she comes across. She reads a lot of books to try and gauge certain different perspectives. She tried to take inspiration from different characters in Indian mythology books.
Advice to young entrepreneurs -
“Don't give up. Start when you have an idea. Jump for it. It's going to be very tough to do it. Every day will have itself with a new set of challenges, just hold on to it. “