PEOPLE
Breaking food barriers
PALLAVI AIYAR
|
Antony Munuswamy's Indian Kitchen brand is getting the Chinese palate used to Indian food.
|
Appetite for adventure: Munuswamy is making inroads into interior China.
WHEN 25-year-old Munuswamy Gnanavelu landed in the Portuguese colony of Macao in 1977, he had little save 250 Hong Kong dollars in his pocket, a yen for Bruce Lee movies and a hearty appetite for adventure. In the years that followed, his multiple avatars included English teacher, sweater knitter, and manual labourer. Today, 29 years after he first left the aromatic environs of his parents' wholesale spice shop in Chennai, Antony Munuswamy (as he is now known), rules over a sprawling empire of 22 Indian restaurants in 10 different Chinese provinces. Indian Kitchen, as the restaurants are called, is possibly the most recognisable Indian brand in China.
Antony started the first Indian Kitchen in 1990 in Macao. At the time he was running a moderately successful construction company that specialised in metal fabrication and waterproofing. By then, Macao was home. He had married a Chinese lady in 1984 and found prosperity after weathering several bouts of near starvation and bankruptcy. However, while his appetite for adventure had certainly been sated, his longing for good, home-style Indian food remained unappeased.
Absence of Indian food
"I was born into a Chettinad family and I was born to eat," smiles Antony, "I missed my own food from 1977 to 1990. As the boss of a construction company, I entertained people every day at Chinese restaurants and Portuguese places but in my heart I just wanted my own food." For a boy raised amid the heady scents of cardamom and pepper, the absence of Indian food in Macao needed urgent remedy.
The first Indian Kitchen was an instant success, with people queuing up for a table within weeks of its opening. "I had to beg people to make reservation at least 10 days in advance or they might be disappointed," remembers Antony with barely concealed glee. Within the year, Antony had opened two more Indian Kitchens in Macao. The only other Indian restaurant on the island, run by a Portuguese, was unable to withstand the competition and quietly closed.
Antony's first foray into the Chinese mainland was in 1992 when he established a restaurant in Zhuhai city in the southern province of Guangdong. "I realised that Macao would soon be handed back to the Chinese in 1999 and that the mainland was where the future lay," he recalls.
After setting up yet another restaurant, this time in Zhongshan city, also in Guangdong, Antony decided in 1995 to start a management company that would run future restaurants on a franchise model.
Under this model anyone who wants to open an Indian Kitchen restaurant approaches the management company with a proposal. If accepted, the company provides the franchisee with design, training, engineering and marketing services. Each restaurant must adhere to a strict overall design from the menu to the kitchen. The Indian Kitchen Management Company then supplies the franchisee with four cooks and a manager. All additional employees directly hired by the franchisee, are given intensive training.
Today the company directly employs 260 Indians and 1,500 Chinese. Cooks and managers from India are paid around RMB 6,000 ($750) a month and provided with shared accommodation. Antony engenders fierce loyalty amongst his employees.
Bimrao Sathish has worked for Indian Kitchen restaurants in China since 1998. He is currently the manager of the Beijing branch. When talking about "his boss", Satish is almost reverential. "My boss (Antony) treats us just like family." he says, "At Indian Kitchen, we really feel like brothers and sisters."
In provincial cities
Perhaps what's most remarkable about the Indian Kitchen restaurants is that the majority of them are located in provincial cities far away from the expatriate centres of Beijing and Shanghai. This means that the majority of their clientele are local Chinese.
This is noteworthy because although in India, Chinese food has long been a favourite, available even at roadside dhabas, the Chinese have been more cautious in embracing Indian cuisine. The half a dozen Indian eateries in Beijing for example are usually thronged by either desi businessmen fleeing from the weirder Chinese offerings like chicken feet or by nostalgic British professionals in search of a "curry".
Indian Kitchen's success has thus lain in breaking down the barriers that usually divide the locals from "foreign" food and in making samosas and pakoras familiar words in second-tier cities like Changchun and Changzhou.
According to Sathish, who worked in Indian Kitchen restaurants in Zhongshan and Shenzhen before moving to Beijing, this has been achieved by tailoring both menu and flavours to the Chinese palate. Dishes are made creamier and less spicy. Popular main courses include beef curry and fish head korma.
At lunchtime, the Beijing branch is packed. More than half the clientele are local Chinese. Some are repeat customers, others are trying the food for the first time. One Chinese lady who works as an executive in an advertising firm says she had always been nervous of trying Indian food, afraid the spiciness would ruin her stomach but she loves the dishes she tasted at Indian Kitchen and swears she will come back.
Success has not stilled Antony's ambitions. Having started a spice factory that manufactures curry powder and paste in 2001, he now wants to concentrate on becoming the dominant player in the Chinese commercial spice market. Plans to open Indian Kitchen restaurants in Japan, Korea and Taiwan are also afoot.
"When Kentucky and McDonalds can set up franchises all over the world then why not us? Based on the profile I have created in China, 30 years down the road, I want to be all over the world with at least one Indian Kitchen," Antony beams. Then he turns more reflective and softly says, "If I turn back and look at my past, I feel so satisfied. I could never have dreamt that that first restaurant would lead me till today!"
Antony's story reveals the spirit of a true entrepreneur. And while he hatches his future plans, a new generation of Munuswamys is gearing up to strengthen the bridge across the Himalayas that Antony has forged. Antony's second-in-command, his sister's son recently married a Chinese lady in Shanghai. Fortunately for Chinese stomachs, Indian Kitchen looks set to sweeten the Middle Kingdom with gulab jamuns well into the 21st century.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
