How Former Infosys Engineer Builded A Rs 110 Chain Rolling For Rs 60 Crore Sales Within Just Five Years?

At a time when coffee and tea chains were growing across the country, Samrat decided to seek a soft chain, although he was encouraged to start the business at Starbucks, an international coffee shop.

With only one business in Hyderabad in 2016, Drunk Monkey and its intriguing slogan, Naturally High, has grown exponentially in the last five years following a brokerage model.

They are currently in 110 stores with annual sales of Rs 60 crore in the 2020-21 financial year. With the exception of the two sales points that are owned by the company, the rest are all franchisees.

The chain has a strong presence in South India and most of its stores are located in Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bengaluru. They have several stores in Delhi and Mumbai and one in Kolkata.

Samrat, 36, has not yet taken an easy step and wants to double his trips in the next 10 months. "I want to touch on 250 sales points in the next 10 months and in the next three years I plan to expand to other countries as well," he says.

"I want to introduce a shake registration system and make shake a part of everyday life. Smoothies are like fruit packed in a bottle."

Samrat's transformation began when he decided to quit his job at Infosys, where he had worked for more than a year and was earning Rs 1.5 lakh.

When he decided to quit his job, he had lived in Melbourne, Australia, for about a year and had just received a title and offer from a four-year stay company in Australia.

"I quit my job because I knew that if I did not do that, I would never be able to move," laughs Samrat, explaining his decision which was probably not very expected of someone who had just graduated from college two years ago.

But that is how Samrat loved to live his life. After leaving Infosys, he continued his MBA in Marketing (2008-09) at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

A confident sports and cricket lover prides himself on having street minds, unlike many other academics.

"When I started working, I discovered that many top artists worked hard, but they did not have the intelligence on the road and did not have social skills," says the man, who today has more than 1,000 people working in his house. sales points, sales of tenants. "Today I do not rate people based on their qualifications. I look at his skills and the people. "

Samrat was born in the Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh. His father, Sudhakar Reddy, was a professor of zoology, and his mother, Siva Lakshmi Reddy, was a professor of chemistry. They both retired two years ago.

And what was your answer when you decided to quit your highly paid job at Infosys?

"They were not surprised," he says. “Ever since I was a child, I have never done what my parents wanted me to do, so they wanted me to have a safe and secure life. They did not stop me from pursuing my dreams. "

While his parents worked in Hyderabad, Samrat spent most of his childhood in his aunt's house in Chennai, where he grew up with several cousins, and this environment shaped his personality to a great extent.

"I had a happy childhood, as growing up in a large family helped me to understand people better and the fact that we are all different," says Samrat, recalling his formative years in Chennai.

“Also, none of us were harmed, and shouting was meaningless, so we disciplined ourselves early in life. I played a lot of cricket and basketball in my youth and sports taught me more than any other book. He did not hate to face loss or failure."

Samrat was also academically proficient. She passed her 12th Class in 2002 from Union Christian Matriculation Senior High School, Chennai, with a high pass rate of 96%.

He graduated with a degree in electronics and instrumentation from SRM College, Chennai, in 2006 and joined the pilot environmental engineer at Infosys, where he worked for more than a year before retiring and enrolling at an MBA in the UK.

He returned to India in 2009 and set up a 3D animation company, Hestia Studio Pvt Ltd, along with his friend, investing Shs 5 lakhs in the company. In the first year itself, the company acquired sales of Rs 1 crore.

Between 2010 and 2015, when his friend and business partner oversaw Hestia, Samrat took on different roles. At that point, he also started playing with the idea of ​​starting a chain of shakes.

He worked in an iron factory owned by his uncle as general manager of operations, then in a temporary water treatment plant in Cameron, and also in an oil drilling company (2014-15) in Oklahoma, USA.

"I was able to manage different industry activities as I was a fast student. I believe in learning where you go and take it every day," says Samrat, who took a two-month break in 2015 to visit some of his friends who lived in many parts of Australia.

“I visited friends who lived in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. I wanted to start something new and started thinking about the idea of ​​shaking."

In 2015, they shut down Hestia, whose sales had reached $ 5 million by then, and the following year they made Rs 1 million for Drunk Monkey, pouring that money into R&D and creating many interesting rows.

"In 2016 we opened the first Drunk Monkey store in Hyderabad in an area of ​​700 square feet with five employees and 200 types of tremors. Our shakes are 100% natural and have no preservatives," says Samrat.

The soft price ranges from Rs 90 to 250 and the best-selling varieties are dried fruit and watermelon. "We've introduced smoothie bowls recently. They can be (full) as food," says Samrat, who was married two years ago.

His wife, who holds a Ph.D. in agricultural science, runs a house and has no plans to join his business.