Today’s story is about a person who is a successful food entrepreneur. And today he has created a business of more than Rs 18 crores annually. Debashish Majumdar remembers when he did not have money for his mother’s surgery, and 200 rupees to buy a new pair of shoes for his wife.
The owner of Momomiya in Guwahati, which was started in 2018 from a 110 sq ft shop with Rs 3.5 lakh, Debashish has an inspirational story to share.
Speaking to an exclusive talk, Debashish, 34, says, “Grown up in Habra, West Bengal, I was always convinced that as a child from a lower-middle-class background, I studied to be a banker, an engineer. doing. Or a doctor would be the best thing for me. Internalizing it, I grew up to be a banker.
Debashish remembers the day when he got his first job as an office assistant in a company in Guwahati – 26 November 2005. “I also remember that my first salary was Rs 1,800. But after the first day of work, I went home and told my mother that I wanted to quit. It was at his insistence that I stuck with that first job and moved on.
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Work on your dreams
As an office assistant, Debashish says that a lot of his time was spent in work. During this time, he would look at all the glass cabins and hope to sit in one of them. He says, “I went to the general manager and told him about this dream. I wanted to sit in one of the cabins that had air-conditioning and work on my computer. It was a small dream but I worked on it.
Four years later, in 2009, when Debashish resigned from the company as chief accountant. He rose from an office assistant to a chief accountant. He also pursued a career as a banker and was getting a decent salary, but he says, “Even though the money in a bank job was good, I was not satisfied with what I was doing. I wanted to be an entrepreneur.”
After six months of her marriage, she left a well-paying job.
Debashish says, “It was one of the toughest decisions I have ever taken. I was newly married and decided to quit my well paying job to pursue a passion. Surprisingly, my mother and wife were very encouraging and did not doubt my decision even once. On the contrary, he supported me.”
Had a small start
Debashish first started the business in 2017, which was an ice cream shop. He said, “It did not progress and I suffered a loss of around Rs 10 lakh at that time. It was a huge loss. Even then my mother and wife supported me,” he says, adding that the idea of starting a momo joint came to him when he was visiting an outlet in Guwahati where he thought they could serve better momos.
With a loan of around Rs 3.5 lakh with an interest rate of 10 per cent, he launched Momomiya in 2018, a year after he closed the ice cream shop. “I had to make sure the location was prime to ensure a good footfall. This also meant higher rental rates,” he says. Nothing was easy but Debashish stuck to the idea. And Momomiya is running as a successful business today.
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