The start-up inception story started in 2016, when Sushil Kanugolu after his Business study in Manchester, United Kingdom, came back with his experience in working in meat retail in UK. He took over his 37-year-old family business of seafood exports and gave it a modern form and successfully turned it into a roaring affair. It was with this confidence that he started Fipola Retail India, south India’s first modern meat retail company in Chennai. Read to learn more about how Mr. Sushil flourished in this business even during the pandemic.
Current Scenario of the Meat Industry
After the inception of Fipola Retail India, several other players also entered in rendering similar kind of business. Many failed and some are still struggling to prove a point. But like Sushil, today India believes that the meat retail has to take this modern step and from millions of unorganized meat retails, the organized ones will stand out and thrive in future. The business was always bootstrapped for the initial four years, but now as the business has leaped several folds funding has been necessary to first spread across south India and then progressively to the entire country.
Effects of the Pandemic
Every business has faced its own rise and fall during Covid-19. Organising resources to work to organizing raw materials to sell have always been a challenge during the fearsome pandemic. But Fipola stood out from all others and proved a point by selling essential goods that was necessary for its customers during the lockdown and in fact it started doing better than normal times. Pandemic has become an opportunity rather than a reason to slow down.
Steps Taken to Tackle Difficult Times
Fipola has its own unique ways to retain its customers or even increase them organically. Its no-tolerance policy for customer complaints helps its customer contact teams to realize that customer is the most important part of the puzzle. “We replace or refund our goods to every challenge faced by the customer during their purchase journey,” said Sushil.
Products and Services offered by the Start-up
Fipola deals with all kinds of products related to Meat, Seafood, Gravies, Sauces, Cold cuts, Masala, and all accessory products which make it a Meat Super Store.
Challenges Faced while Incorporating the Company
Fipola faced all kinds of challenges that any start-up would face, from monetary challenges to profitability thus viability challenges. It had a very long wait till it could even see the slightest of money gains almost for a long four-year stint.
Vision and Future Goals
Fipola has already started seeing great fruits of its journey. In the last one year it also diversified into three more companies like Mediumrare, Grill House and SourceFresh, and also started expanding its stores to other cities like Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Vellore, Puducherry, Tirupur and in future Bengaluru.
The vision of this company is to become the strongest leading Meat Super Store in India and later in South Asia.
Surviving as a Start-up during the Pandemic
In these hardest times that the human race has ever faced during its entire evolution, today surviving in these times is the biggest challenge that anyone can face. The tip that Sushil Kanugolu wants to give the world, after coming out victorious over other business players is, “Do not waste time waiting for the good times to come back or do not stay back with living in your glorious past, spring up immediately with time and environment and bounce back. Think of an idea that can survive in the circumstances and work towards it. It may be entirely different to what you have been doing. But it does not matter. Bouncing back and surviving is the most important thing here. I suggest the safest bit is to cling to a business involving essential commodities, which can never let you down. There is even no competition for n-number of players thronging up on any essential goods business, as it’s the only thing that human race will strive for in times like these.”
