Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

B(re)aking recipes for success

PHOTOS (COVER AND CENTRESPREAD): S. JAMES

SHREWD A stand alone performer

Many times I have stopped at this fancy little tea hut on the Madurai-Rameswaram Highway. Not so much for the tea-bag dipped disposable cup of ‘chai’ but for the interesting assortment of rusk biscuits laid out.

Given the location on a nice evening, they indeed make for good snacks. The teatime rusk presented like a pizza with a narrow slice of cheese topped with diced tomatoes and cucumber, or the chocolate layered rusk or even the different flavoured jam covering the upper crust of the rusk making it a nice dessert pleased my tastebuds.

The brand name “Sidekick” made me wonder about the man behind it and finally drove me to him. What impressed me most about Mr.M.Dhinagar Vel, the Promoter and Managing Director of Indian Food & Pvt.Ltd, was his optimism and positive thinking whether he is talking about his industry or preserving heritage buildings.

Selecting Madurai as a location for starting an enterprise, three decades ago, was never a drawback.

“Even today, Madurai is dubbed as a big village. People are sceptical about the growth prospects here. I never had that mental block. I came here with a determination to make it,” he says, as we settle for the ‘Weekend’ chat at his sprawling and aesthetically done up house.

Sipping chilled and sweet water melon juice on a hot summer morning, he walks down memory lane from his birth, ancestral home and family in Thoothukudi to doing B.E in Mechanical Engineering from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore – and becoming the first Graduate in his family.

After brief stints in BHEL, Tiruchi and a Bangalore-based private company, he went for a collaborative project to Japan. And that proved to be a turning point as he decided to “turn to baking” but not before getting trained at reputed institutions in the U.S and Denmark.

“My grandfather was a known grain merchant who founded the Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank. He encouraged every successive generation to be different and not just follow the forefathers and their businesses. I too believe each generation should be the first generation. I never stifled my children’s dreams and they support mine,” says Mr.Vel, the son of a petroleum and tyre dealer.

“When in Japan I had to cook my meals. My mother and sister sent me recipes and I discovered the hidden chef in me. I began to enjoy cooking and all my friends always appreciated my food. That’s when I thought of getting into the food industry,” he continues

With overseas travel, Mr.Vel realised that bakers world over occupied a unique position in the minds of customers as providers of daily bread, fresh food, breakfast and coffee, celebration cakes, cookies, pies and tarts, snacks or healthy meal accompaniments like rolls and buns.

But in India, ‘idlis, dosas and parottas’ attained a position of strength pushing bakers to the backburner. His research also helped him understand the huge potential in biscuit industry and he launched the India Food Pvt.Ltd, choosing the riverside plot in Tiruppuvanam to set up his first factory in 1980.

“I was confident of making biscuits using my engineering technology but did not know how to market it. That time Spencers was a big retail in South India. With a reasonable offer, I started selling my product as Spencer’s biscuit from their outlets in 1982.”

But the company could not load his two tons a day capacity fully. Luckily Britannia stepped in with a similar offer.

The changeover took place in 1987.

“Britannia is a big brand. With its aggressive marketing and extensive networking, it can overnight enter lakhs of shops. The tie-up stopped my bleeding as an entrepreneur and I slowly stabilized my operations over the next decade also increasing my capacity to 50 tonnes of Britannia biscuits a day.

“Though I was baking my own biscuits, it was brand Britannia that sold. I did not want to remain a biscuit manufacturer alone. If you are an entrepreneur you need to be a strategist too and not run into conflicts,” he shares.

Mr.Vel found his second calling and turned into a friend of the baker. Blessed with amazing self-confidence, he started meeting people who were interested in baking bread or buns, puffs or cakes.

“Bakery level in our country is very low. 1994 was also the time when duty was exempted and I started importing machines with an objective to modernize the existing bakeries.”

Mr.Vel pioneered the import of baking machines in India. Today, he is the largest importer of latest bakery technology and represents 20 European companies. He installs, gives demos, recipes, service and maintenance to all his clients. “State-of-the-art machinery available now, is attracting a lot of first generation bakers,” he says.

He rues that the last decade also witnessed machines getting copied and manufactured locally. “But still some very special, exclusive and the best baking machines and ovens are made abroad and all the top bakers and five star hotels in the country buy those from us,” he adds.

Six years down, Mr.Vel diversified into rusks. “Since I had learnt bakery in and out, and strengthened by the knowledge of marketing, packaging, branding I launched Sidekick in 2000 because I felt the rusk (toasted biscuit) was an ignored segment.”

“I am a self-learned man who didn’t want to be a superman but wanted to go along as a little underdog. So I chose the name ‘Sidekick’, which will always be with you not as a main meal provider but as a simple and soulful accompaniment. Rusk as a category in the biscuit market has good potential and I am aiming at that emotional connection.”

With a separate two tons a day capacity for his rusks, Mr.Vel has introduced 10 variants under his much thoughtful brand name and is now looking at a bigger plant and some more new products.

This co-convener of INTACH and past president of CII, Madurai zone, is a stand alone giant who dares to dream. Soft-spoken and accessible, very organized in his thoughts and delivery, he, however, asserts one point: “I like to be myself. You can benchmark my work but don’t compare me with anybody else.”

“Simple meditation and yoga helps us to do inner engineering. Business is full of ups and downs but we need to maintain our inner balance,” he advocates.

Fit as a swan, he doesn’t believe in going to health clubs but unfailingly enjoys the brisk morning walk and pranayama.

His wife says he is “too easy going with people and too crazy about work.” His life is as open as his newly constructed open and spacious home and office buildings. “Economy and ecology-friendly, I got a Danish student of architecture on the net to do my office without him visiting the site even once!” he reveals.

Stickler of rules, he earmarks time for family and work. He calls it a day by dusk and enjoys a film or a music concert, a play or a book before taking on the rigors of a new day, totally rejuvenated.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail