Entrepreneurs Wanted — Part 2
It’s a long note ( mostly because I can’t stop once I start — about 500 people in our company can vouch for that), but its a must-read if you are interested in working at Rebel Foods(the parent company of Faasos). This note outlines who we are and who we are looking for to join our ranks.
I wrote a similar note back in 2011, followed by a few more over the years. Here it is for ready reference http://brownianmusings.blogspot.in/2011/11/entrepreneurs-wanted.html .
In some sense, the above note is important, as it gives you a perspective on how things went for us since then. People who joined us back then as a result of this note, today run this company. Most things written in that note turned out to be true. All our functions — food, ops, tech, marketing— are now run by the people who came on board subsequent to this note. Yup, we have a senior management, where everyone has been here for at least 5 years. That’s particularly telling for a 6.5 year old company. We have never hired “decorated” generals with 20 years of work-ex. And then, another bunch of young rockstars joined us over the years, who manage our tech, cities, supply chain and brands. They are the true architects of probably the only scaled up (160 cloud kitchen locations across 12 cities in india) multi-brand (8 brands / virtual restaurants) Food on Internet company in the world. They are the true founders of our growing little company, while Kallol (my cofounder) and I focus more and more on intangible stuff like writing notes like this. As a couple of lazy Bengalis it comes naturally to us.
Before going into who we are looking for to fuel our next stage of growth, I wanted to take a few minutes to describe our company — as many of you may not know what brewed at Rebel / Faasos, behind the scenes in last 4 years.
We believe, at Rebel, we are probably attacking the last frontier of internet — Food Service. Not food delivery, but actually running F&B businesses. If you think about it, in almost all consumer service sectors, world’s most valuable companies are Internet companies: Retail: Amazon, Travel: Priceline, Commute: Uber, Hospitality: Airbnb ( probably just shy of Mariott at 35 BN USD), Home entertainment: Netflix, Food / grocery Delivery: Meituan. However, the only consumer sector, where world’s top 500 most valuable companies are still the offline giants, is Food Service. McDonalds alone is worth USD 130 BN. We believe, in the next decade or so, this will change. F&B behemoths shall be built on the cloud — making delicious food optimized for delivery at your doorstep, operating at a fundamentally altered economic structure.
Now, people may say, if this revolution happens, it will happen first in the US ( or China). Who are we to build something original out of India? However, I think India is the perfect market for this particular disruption. India is different, and one way it is different from China /US is the Food Service market is 95% unorganized (100 BN+ market growing at 15–20% CAGR). In spite of the fact that there are several categories that are worth USD 10 BN+, such as Indian Meals, Biryani, Chinese, Desserts etc , there are very few organized, national level play in India beyond pizzas and burgers.
The primary reason for this is very poor infrastructural supply for food outlets. There are very few high street locations that make sense for an offline food play from an infra point of view and hence everyone is going after the same spots, making rent / sales ratio unsustainable for most businesses (highest in the world). 65% + restaurant businesses close in India in year 1 because of this economic issue as a result of scarcity of good locations.
This is what we are solving for. Building multiple restaurant brands in largest categories on the internet, using our 160 (and growing) cloud kitchens in 12 cities, a pan-India supply chain and a home-grown end-to-end technology developed solely for managing this unique business — from inventory to customer experience. We are not dependent on high street costly locations. We can operate from our designed-for-delivery cloud kitchens with a totally altered cost structure of running an F&B business. Remember mobile leapfrogging expansion of landline telephony in India?
A more detailed (though a little dated) account about what we are building is here:
https://medium.com/faasos-story/a-unique-take-on-food-tech-dcef8c51ba41
The last 36 months have been transformative for us, as we have scaled up brand after brand from the same network of kitchens and supply chain and in the process discovered how powerful and disruptive this can be. And now the stage is set for us to spread our wings and build a national and global F&B business — purely on internet.
Sorry for the long preamble. Now coming to the main point of this note, we are now looking for the next set of “entrepreneurs” to join us and solve problems that relate to a much larger scale than today — spreading to every corner of India, putting 1000 locations across the country, opening new markets internationally, launching new brands and use cases, building world class tech solutions (for example, a personal virtual butler). You will be part of our LeadX program — a program built for creating our next set of leaders. You will go through a stint of running a kitchen and an area comprising 3–7 kitchens, before you move to a role / problem of your choice, anywhere in the company.
However, a note of caution. The core of our company has been built through a solid display of Entrepreneurship by our employees — from our kitchen managers to city heads to product managers, engineers, brand managers, the execomm. As a result, we have become a rather “abnormal” company ( this is what we are most proud of — no one can say we have built a run of the mill enterprise, for good or for bad). And hence, it is not for everyone, especially not for people looking for a steady, well-paying ( ok, we pay fairly well in addition to a healthy chunk of stock, just in case you are shutting this note down), mildly political, blame-shifting, bell-curvy, five-boring-days-a-week job. Here is a snapshot of what our company looks like from inside. Please go through it, if you are seriously considering us as your next destination.
So, if you are “hungry for action” type, entrepreneurial, mildly crazy (not schizophrenic, if you don’t mind), 20 something and always looking for good food, then do get back to me or Isha ( Isha@faasos.com ) . We prefer (only prefer) post graduate / MBAs, not because they are some life changing education, but because, if you have already done it, then chances are you are done with your studies and the life is now real for you (and we don’t have to subsidize your GMAT / CAT / GRE). And we prefer 1 / 2 years of experience post education, not because experience is important to succeed here, but because, if you have worked for a “corporate” type company after your studies— either selling soda/soap/sim card or making slides for a mildly disinterested client — then you know for sure how mind-numbing these things are. That’s the clarity we look for. Needless to say, if you are not an MBA, not an Engineer, have never been to college, and have no willingness to change that, you are the perfect candidate, as you probably have the most clutter free mind.
One last thing — No CVs, no videos, no bulky attachment please, when you write to us. The email should cover a) who you are as a person and what experiences made you so, b) why you want to come to this “abnormal” company (preferably including your hidden agendas — because they are usually the real ones) and c) one thing that you have discovered in life yourself, using first principle.
All the best,
Jaydeep
