Immigrant to Innovator: How Rudy Parengal Built a Food Tech Empire in the UK

I mortgaged my mom's house. It feels terrible to even say that.

That's special though.

Didn't have anything for myself. I had to have like, economic consideration at the forefront of, of my decision. Building something on your own and taking that full responsibility regardless of which way it goes, was scary. From Kerala to the uk, Rudy's journey is all about grit, resilience and building a global food empire. A first gen immigrant risk taker and entrepreneur redefining the food industry. We are in the business of offering a platform for food entrepreneurs to scale their brands. It's to solve the problem of food entrepreneurs constantly having to work there. At Astrosoft, this is one of the most intense industries ever. The fail rates are ridiculously high. So there is about 60 to 70% chance that you'll fail within the first year and I think this fail rate is about 80 to 90 within the first five years.

So I have firsthand experience of running, running a food business and it's ruthless for me.

I need to be net positive. I need to give more than I take and I think that's my perspective. How can I add value to other people? You know, growth is supported by three things. One is action, consistency and focus.

And also learning by sharing. The more you share, the more you learn.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. What can I achieve from the obvious disadvantages that I grew up from? So I think what's going to happen is.

Hi, Rudy, welcome to the pod.

Hello, sir. How are you doing?

Thank you. It's great to finally meet you. We've been following each other's journey on social media and now we're here. First of all, before we get into anything, thank you for coming on the pod, but thank you also for being a partner at Flummo.

Fantastic. You know, we actually discovered the app and I think around the same time that we had a conversation and the team loves it. You know, I've been out in the market for a good HR platform that has got, well being built into the system and everybody's using that in the team and it's fantastic. Great product by the way. So, you know, it speaks for itself.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. All right, so Rudy in the premise of the POD, obviously is immigrants who are building companies in the uk. So walk me through your immigrant journey. When did you move to the uk? Why did you move to the uk? What were you doing before that?

Fantastic. So obviously that's like a, a book worth of content there. So I'll try and be as quick as possible through the whole thing. I moved here 2019 and obviously the lucky unlucky bunch where we've just before pandemic. I, I'm from India, south of India, from a state called Kerala and being born and brought up in a very working class family and lost my dad when I was about 18. And from then on, obviously if you know, some other parts of the, you know, in some parts of the culture you've got like a very patriarchal society, isn't it? So the eldest son has got to take a lot of responsibility. So I sort of had to grow up and had to take on that shoulder, that responsibility. So I never went to university, did my undergrad and bachelor bachelor's in accounting and finance through Open Open University and I was working with the local government in Kerala and I was working part time jobs like teaching students, like in school kids and everything, supporting my, my mom, she's a teacher and I've got a sister as well. She's currently a scientist at Unilever, but she was, she's a couple of years younger than me. So at that point in time I had to take care of her as well. But then a couple of years down the line I was not, you know, growing, I was, I was being like, we call it a frog in the well. Frog in the well doesn't know the world outside the well. It thinks the well is the world. So I didn't really want to do that. I've always had this curiosity to understand, you know, what's out there and also to expand my knowledge. And I've obviously been reading books and obviously that became, you know, a key premise of exploring the lengths and breadths of the world out there, but also what I could do within that, what I could create within that. So once I finished my bachelor's, you know, exams and everything that you've got to do, I didn't have any, you know, university experience at all, thought maybe I should go to university and study. And my mom was very supportive and incredibly, incredibly brave and courageous woman. She supported the idea, nobody else did. And obviously I'm the first one from my family to ever go abroad. Like, only no one's ever gone abroad and didn't really have the financial scenarios for that. But my granddad had some property. He said, sell it, find the money and go. And I said, no, I'm not going to sell it. What if I can't, you know, I can't do anything, you know, to get it back or whatever. So I said, I'll put it in the bank, I'll take that Risk I'll stop paying interest or whatever but I'll use that money to take an education loan to, to go abroad. I think these days a lot of people are doing that but at that point in time like I didn't really have anyone to model it on. Literally no connections at all so I decided to apply for some master's degree courses Wanted to study international relations actually because I really, I'm really interested in history, political science, economics and stuff like that but because my bachelor's I got admissions into international business at the University of Liverpool got a couple of different universities but with some of it had like half scholarships, full scholarships but I actually got into University of Liverpool without any scholarship so I was paying a lot but I, I had something about Liverpool that calling me and big fan of LFC obviously you know so it added to that and, and it was, it was, I think at that point in time it was voted one of the best student cities so decided to go there. One of the best decisions I've ever made in life. Quit that job, big leap of faith. Didn't know what was going to happen at that point in time a student visa came with four to six months of post study sort of leave to remain. Nowadays it's two years I think post study work graduate visa or whatever it's called now so I had like four months to actually find a job but that was already a pressure paying for the visas, looking after my family even even though I'm far out. My mom's alone in the house and you know we got her a dog and yeah it's like somewhat of a company but moved here three months fantastic experience. Everything was like wow this is amazing. Met a lot of people I mean I'm a social butterfly so I love meeting people chatting with them about their experiences. I made friends around the but then Covid happens obviously so everybody that I ever knew at that point in time left the country or moved back to their homes so there was no connections like complete isolation and job market went on there and I literally stared in it for four months off leave to remain before I've got it and if I go home I won't be able to pay back the loans. Wow. It was, it was a big risk but fortunately got a job, got a sponsorship very thankful for a lot of people and my life. Met one of my very good friends and my co founder Angie she was my boss at that job. I got promoted a couple of times very quickly and the univ within the university it was like a COVID testing program and I used to work for some fantastic people including Rachel and they said you've got to stay here, we'll get you a visa. And sorted it out. So worked there for a bit, started building my professional record and then moved into an E commerce business, local SME. That's when I really expanded my network and you know, with, with local businesses understood the mechanics of how business works. It obviously had some foundational understanding by studying international business but it's very generalistic so you've got the hands on experience. Came there and then unfortunately that company. So I had to move to another visa for that one. But so you probably know the visa cost and everything is like two, three grand every time you've got a sort of move over. So any money that you save up goes to. It's a cost. So then moved into a management consulting job after. But at that around that time I had this idea that I was playing with and the university was offering a thing called a startup visa.

Yeah.

So I got a startup visa and started exploring this idea. So I didn't get a work visa sponsorship from my latest employer. I was working for a company called Civica and again through some fantastic people. I've had some terrible times, you know, when I was jobless for, for a while and it's always been, when I look back it's always been people that I helped at some point without any expectation of getting anything back, helping me back in like 100x better way than I've helped them. So a couple of my friends re recommended me for a role. They were already in there and I got that job and I've been doing that. I did that in 2022 for about less than a year I'd say but was a part of a big machine and your, your responsibility, authority, you know, the outcome of what you do is say impact is very low. So essentially decided that it was not for me. Understood a lot of, you know, learned a lot of things understood like structured thinking, you know, how do you present information in a way as a consultant built a lot of selling skills as well and left the job and decided that I'm going to take that leap of faith and I'm going to try and build this whole thing myself. And that's when Abjack was born. And since then 2022, we started operations around November, December 2022. And since then I've been building the business and obviously loads of ups and downs as you can imagine. Again for the business. No previous experience of running my own business. The E Commerce business I was managing, I had funding, I don't really didn't have to worry about funding until I grew the revenues up to 100k in like 3 months. So, but that was because I had some support there. I built teams around, like around the world, etc, it was fantastic. But building something on your own and taking that full responsibility regardless of which way it goes was scary. And again, didn't have any money to do any of that. Uh, so my mom, her house, you know, I, I, I said to him, my mom, like I've got this idea, I don't know how to do this. And she said, try and mortgage the house. So I mortgaged my mom's house. It feels terrible to even say that, but at that point in time it.

Was just special though.

Yeah, it is, it is. You know, that's, that's what I'm saying. It's very, very, she's a special person. She's the, the most courageous person that I know and she believes in me probably more than anyone else in the world. So basically got that loan, helped me get started and then from then on, you know, we've, we've built the business out and we've done several hundreds of thousands of pounds in revenues, I think about 5,600k, a very minimum. We've got, we've changed around a few different, we've looked at different verticals, looked at what, what works and what doesn't and we've, last year we've raised venture capital funding.

Amazing.

And previous to that one of my very close friends invested as an angel. So you know, all of these, all of these things really showcase like, you know, if you really take that leap of faith and if you really figured it out, if you know how to keep it alive, that's the main part at that stage. You've got to keep it alive. You keep it alive, the ways will just open up for you and, but the, what I'm most grateful for is obviously the people that I built with, you know, obviously fantastic people. Two of my ex bosses work with me right now as co founders and the business. So being grateful to, to meet those people, grateful with my team even, even when times were rough, nobody walked, everybody stood strong and we've, we've moved on to a new model that we think is a golden goose. Yeah, so that's pretty much my story.

No, no, no, that's amazing. I mean we'll, we'll obviously dig deeper in every element of your story. So let's start, I mean there's a lot of things that I can, you know, I can relate. Yeah. So I moved to the UK in 2020, 19th of March 2020. And I believe that's the day the UK went to the lockdown. I mean, I could be wrong, but. Yeah.

So darling.

Well, well, it was also by design though.

Right, okay.

Because I was living in Dubai at that time, so I was raised in Dubai and I obviously established the company in the uk. Yes. And that was strategic because we didn't know how long the lockdown would be. Yeah, two days, two months, two years, whatever. Yeah. So I'm okay if there's a lockdown. I would rather be in the country where the business is. I don't want to be, you know, outside of the country.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I think it was the same day. So I can, I can, I can relate to that and the loneliness and everything that just comes on top of it.

Yeah, it's a whole, whole conversation there.

I mean. And another thing I can relate is I also dropped out. I mean, I, I didn't go to university myself, so. But I think a lot of people, I was speaking to a lot of people at that time who were in universities and I was mentoring a few student entrepreneurs as well. And I think it was quite strange because of course you go to university for the educational aspect, but then there's the whole networking and meeting people and the whole aspect. I think that people who graduated during that time sadly missed out on all of that. I mean, you're talking about yourself being the social butterfly and then I don't know how you felt because now you're in a new country. Yeah, now you're a new country and you came from that perhaps. And you're building network, doing whatever, whatever. And then bam, there's lockdown.

Exactly.

How was your experience on that?

Yeah, it's, you know, I'm pretty sure you've gone through the same scenario. It's. It was quite challenging because you don't have your family or anybody else that you know in the country at all. There is and obviously you've got that like bubbles that you can sort of mix with. There is no bubble. Where is a bubble for a first gen immigrant here. So you're literally going to work and coming back. And I was working. I had people that I used to work with because it was a COVID testing facility that I was managing. Otherwise there is no office to go either and struggles for making a living for a while as well. But at that point in time I used to bike a lot. So the great British summer was a blessing and I would just bike. I had, I did a, I did a cross country biking trip with one of my friends, got my like tent and camping equipment onto the bike and we cycled for I think about a week and a half, maybe two weeks. Yeah, yeah. So we just camped random places like right in the middle of the forest or whatever. And we just, if there is a, a, a river or a stream, we did, that's when we take a shower. And then so we, we went all the way around, you know, the, the east coast and you know, all the way to London and back up to Liverpool. So yeah, that, that was sort of a good way to sort of try and get, you know, a little bit better. But then I think at that point in time I was as, as I've mentioned earlier, the, I've, I've, I, I did take up reading as a, as a key hobby. I wouldn't even call it a hobby. I think I do it consciously to, not just to go, I'm free now, let me read, but I'll just go that I need to understand and I think understand better. And I think I was reading about story system at that point in time and story system is a lot to do with how are you going to be comfortable with yourself, with your own decisions, how you find that sense of peace and calm, you know, when, when you don't have anything surrounding you like, or when you have got everything surrounding you and everything is stressing you out, how do you find that equilibrium, for example? And I think that's when I started meditating a lot more, reading a lot more books, finding comfort within myself. So I think Covid killed a little bit of my extroversion, but I think in a good way in the sense that I was a lot more comfortable by, by myself. And I used to do a lot of long distance running, a lot of, you know, charitable work, a lot of, you know, figuring stuff out for myself. And obviously as you said, I was mentoring a lot of people. I was, I wouldn't say mentoring, I would, I was sharing my learning. I don't think I'm in a yet to, to be a full time mentor of sorts, even though I do that on the side for a couple of universities. But I think of that as sharing my own lessons so that people don't have to go through all of those themselves. So I used to sort of, sort of give, give tips and tricks for people to, to move to a different country, not just with Indians coming to the uk everywhere around the world So I sort of understood a lot of the details about how visa systems work in different countries etc, what kind of universities to go for, how do you find a job? So I was pretty. For enough to have a good level of charisma, I'd say to, to as, as and when every job that I've had an interview for, I've got the job. So what I sort of took sort of the lessons from that and I started, you know, slightly coaching people to, to perform better in interviews and everything. So education, jobs, visas, moving to different countries. So I think being comfortable with myself getting out there in the, in nature, doing things for other people and meditating and you know, taking it a little bit slower really, really helped during that period of loneliness. And that loneliness, it sort of, it never goes away. It's, it's always there. As a first gen immigrant, you probably understand this better than most people, but you, you grow around it. And obviously my dad had passed, I think about five years previous to that. Not even five years, like three, four years previous to that. So there was a lot of sorrow there and there is the response, added responsibility of having family matters to take care of. So it wasn't a difficult, it wasn't an easy thing to do at all. But I think going through these actually get you to become stronger and it builds that character within you, isn't it? So I'd say at that point in time it was a struggle but because I approached it from a few different angles and I had some fantastic people like mentors and people that I used to talk to every, every now and then I got the right guidance on what things to focus on or not. And because I did that, now when I look back, I think that was one of the most transformative periods of my life as well.

Sorry to hear about your dad, by the way.

Oh no, no.

But I'm also interested to know around that time obviously, you know, and I can appreciate because, you know, I'm ethnically Indian as well, so.

Oh yeah, yeah, so.

So I appreciate, you know, you're the eldest son and. Oh yeah. And you're a boy like you're a man, you have to have the family. And now, now you're the one who's going to take care of the family and all that. Yeah. So I mean, and I know, I mean, you know, South India, just in general, Kerala, your, your education level is so high. Yeah, I mean literally I think, I think Kerala has 99 or 95 literacy level, which is fantastic. But then why leave the country? Why not Explore, you know, maybe a bigger city within South India or go to, I don't know, Bombay or Delhi or whatever. Yeah, why, why leave the country where especially you're going through all that?

Yeah, yeah, no, I, I think that's a, that's a good question. So Kerala has got one of the highest HDI sort of index indices of, of all states in India. So it's comparable to some European countries as well. So health, development, education, that kind of stuff. But economic opportunities wise, Carol, is not, was not at that point in time still not that great. And I had pretty much a set path in life. So I come from a generation of, you know, I come from a family where it's been generationally teachers. So I could have gone into and I, and I, I've thought because I grew up around teachers and every, literally everybody I speak to is a teacher. So you really know how to simplify concepts, communicate well with younger sort of adults. And that's something that I've, I was really good at. So I did that as a part time job, but I was in the job that I was doing with the local government. The growth rate was very low and I actually got that job as a compassionate employment. So I wasn't in no position to get a job at 18. It wasn't because of my skills that I got a job. It was a compassionate employment program that I don't think they've got now that when my dad died while in service, I got that job. But so I'm working with my dad's colleagues now. So you can imagine the difference in, you know, the generational sort of attitudes and attitudes and fantastic people obviously. But for me, it wasn't what I was, I, I knew it wasn't what I was expected to, to, to be and there was an expectation from, you know, from my parents. I had a very strict upbringing. There is, you know, there is, I wouldn't say there was an expectation of excellence with outcome, but there was an expectation of excellence with the effort. So my dad would not, would not allow me to be mediocre and that. And my mom always taught me to dream big. And she used to say, you know, dream for the stars and you might get a mountain. You know, something like that translating to something. It's just lost. But yeah, so it was, it was a case of, you know, figuring out where my skills lie. And I was still too young to understand that, not having sufficient knowledge or structured education to figure it out either. And in terms of enterprise and building a business wise, you know, it's not really the best places in India. So I actually was fortunate enough to have several different things that I managed to do in different parts of the country. So I lived in Delhi for a bit. I lived in Mumbai for a couple of months. I lived in Bangalore for a couple of months. I lived in Chennai for a year. I think, you know, I was. I was trying to be a chartered accountant, you know, miserably failed. So the reason why I didn't stay any of those places for longer, long enough, was anything that I went to do in those places, I failed at it. I was a massive failure. And I was trying to really figure out where is that, that sort of glimmer of hope. And at the same time, I was. As I was growing and maturing, I was trying to figure out who I am as a person and my values. In a lot of ways, I love the culture, I love the people, but in a lot of ways, the. The micro cultures in certain parts of the country and certain parts of, you know, the state or even within my. My family, I. It wasn't aligned to what I believed in or what I wanted to, you know, to see in the world. So I was looking outwards, okay, the world's a big place. Obviously there should be some place that it's aligned. So I did a lot of research. You sort of, obviously you watch movies when you're kids and you thinking, ah, that's how the life is, but not really. But I think I sort of found that, you know, when I moved to Liverpool, and I say Liverpool rather than the UK because Liverpool's a country on its own. We speak scouts, by the way, I'm an adopted Scouser now, so. But basically speaking, it was a case of economic opportunities. It was a case of being failing at a lot of different things. And it was also to do with some sort of a culture. Cultural or mismatch. Cultural mismatch, I would say, from, like, deep within, I can be an Indian. I could be a proper Indian if I go to India now, But at the same time, there'll be a lot of things that I don't agree with. You could find that everywhere, but it was very stark for me. So I needed to find a place where I felt like it was much more aligned to who I am as a person and what I believed in. And meritocracy was one of the biggest things. And I thought, okay, I need to go to a place where. Where there is a lot more. A lot less power, distance and a lot more focus on meritocracy. Than anything else and, and more economic opportunities as well. So that's when, you know, when looking everywhere in the world. I looked at Australia, Canada, interviewed for some universities in the us, Might have moved to the US if I had gotten some opportunities there, but it was at the time way more expensive than studying in the uk. So all of those, because I come from a background where I didn't have anything for myself, I had to have, like, economic consideration at the forefront of, of my decisions. So, yeah, that's, that's why I moved.

If, if money wasn't a barrier, you think America would have been a better choice?

I think education wise, I think work wise, work life balance wise, the living culture wise, I think I would, you know, stuck with the UK or since I'm building a business, I would say if I'm purely looking at, from an entrepreneurial perspective, yes, America is probably the better place in terms of the availability of capital, skills, taxation rates, for example, you know, all of that combined. I'm pretty sure you'd agree. Yeah.

But I resonate, I mean, a lot of things that you said, somehow, like an existential crisis, you know, like even, I mean, me, I moved here a couple of years ago as well, and somehow I've never felt home as much as I felt or feel whilst being in this country. Like, this is crazy.

Yeah.

And I can't put a pulse on it. Like, I can't, like, actually define it by data. It's just something that. It's eating my gun, you know, it's just one of those. Yeah, yeah. And my experience obviously has been in London and I think London is such a huge melting pot. Like, oh, my golly, people from all across the world, different parts of the world, and different cultures and different religions and whatever. It's just so beautiful.

Yeah.

And I think the opportunities in general, yes, maybe from an entrepreneurial perspective.

Yes.

But I mean, my reality or my perspective is different. Why? Because I'm now comparing it to my reality, my previous reality, and if I compare it to my previous reality. Wow, this is bloody amazing.

Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic on every front.

You know, even from an entrepreneurship perspective, Even from, you know, the valuations that I would get in this country. Even everything, the capital or, you know, the eis, SEIS schemes and you, the R and D tax reliefs, you name it. Like, it's amazing. So many things I started to figure out or know when I was here, I was like, oh, my God, like, this is this crazy? Like, how. And I was like, oh, shit, is this like free money. Like, I didn't buddy understand.

I know, I know, I know.

But, you know, as soon as you start understanding the system, you're like, oh, shit is everything for me. So, you know, life is also about perspective. Right. How, how you really want to view or see life. And I think maybe it's, it's point on point for us to maybe talk about this now every now and again. Especially in the last couple of months, I've seen a lot of negativity towards the uk, especially around the whole, you know, entrepreneurship scheme, you know, scene and whatever. But I mean, again, I would like to be a part of the solution rather than just, you know, continue and just shit on the problem. But yeah, I mean, that's just my perspective and I think somehow I also feel somehow indebted that like, you know, should I have come here and. This country has changed my life.

Yeah.

Like, I built a business here, this business has changed my life and people, you know, and we are impacting so many lives. Yeah, yeah. As well, so. And I wouldn't have this opportunity, so I just feel eternally grateful.

Absolutely. I think it's, you know, I resonate with what you're saying. I think I look at it from that perspective, obviously. And I think immigrants are generally first gen immigrants especially, generally a little bit more grateful for the opportunities because they moved here for those opportunities. Correct. So I'm obviously on that boat. But I also look at, from the other angle, if you look at somebody, our age group, for example, the amount of contribution as a person to the society, you, it's, it's incompatible to, to anybody else. I'm not saying that I'm not amazing people here. I'm saying that you're always a step ahead when you're trying to build something yourself. So you're not just taking and taking from the system or from the society. You're actually contributing actively and you want the society to be better, you want the community to be better, you want the people around you to be, you know, living in a better environment, for example. So I see that as you. I don't think people my age or from my background has paid more taxes than me, should I be. So I think there's that. And Mike, I think I've, I've paid for 50% of home offices or revenues. But you know, there is, there is all of that kind of contributions as well, which is material. And then you come in with a lot of fresh perspectives. I'm solving problems as well. So you bring that innovation which otherwise wouldn't be here. So I think, think if being first gen immigrants, I think we should take pride in the sense that, you know, we, we don't just take, we obviously take as a part of the society but I think in my perspective we contribute a lot more. For me I need to be net positive, I need to give more than I take and I think that's my perspective. But I'm not a perfect person and I have been on the negative wagon for a bit, you know, in terms of everything that's going on and for entrepreneurship and you know, sometimes it is a bit pessimistic, you know, I'm not going to lie about that and especially somebody who's not in London and UK is very London centric. You take away London from the uk, you know what you're going to get. But especially somebody who's in the northwest which is pretty much like say a tenth or hundredth of the size of, you know, London. For example, I can't remember the exact figures but I'll tell you, 20, 21 figures. I think the total amount of early stage investments into startups in Liverpool it was about 75, 80 million quid and in Manchester was about 700 million quid. Same period of time London had about 3.4 billion pounds. So you can see the difference there. Yeah, yeah, that's a disparity there. So this is not, I'm not, I'm not. Please don't quote me on the number.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, it's pretty much like stark, very stock, you know, so it's, it's, it's those kinds of realities that I'm talking about. If you're in London. Yes, fantastic. I didn't have the money to come to London. I didn't have the money to come to London in the middle of the pandemic and find a place to live on my own. And essentially I've been, you know, living in rented places, you know, for the most part of, most part of my life here. And you know, I didn't really even drive for first three years I was cycling everywhere. So the kind of, you know, the experience that I have in north northern city, Liverpool, which is one of the biggest cities in one of the best cities, biggest cities in the UK and one of the largest cities in the, in the, in the world as well. But the experiences are very contrasting when you compare to lond, availability of capital skills, et cetera, et cetera.

Talking about, you know, move you moving into, you know, the whole entrepreneurship aspect. You, you spoke about the startup visa so you're in the university, so you got the startup visa when you're in the university. So did you move into entrepreneurship because, okay, that was a visa route or you wanted to.

I wanted to build it. I wanted to build something on my own. And work visas don't let you do that. You've got to be, you're tied to your own brand, as you probably know. So right now we, we have visa sponsorships, licenses, et cetera and that' the great best ways to bring chefs, for example, and for, for the business. And because you've got a shortage of the chefs in the country and it's ridiculously difficult to get them. But when you got a startup visa, from an employer perspective, it's great because they'll stay with the business, they're loyal to it because the, the visa conditions demand. So. But as a, as somebody who wants, who wants to build something on your own, you don't really have that option when you're on the, on a, on an employer visa, a work visa, skilled worker visa. But I actually looked at all my opportunities at that point in time and it was the time and I think similar, close to when Ukraine, Russia scenario was going on ridiculously, you know, affecting, you know, everything else, including certain visa types. So the only one that I could actually go for was a startup visa. And the University of Liverpool where I graduated from, they had that program and it was the last year I could actually apply, like last few months. And I said, I'm not going to waste that opportunity. I hate opportunity cost, by the way. So I took that opportunity to move it, move to that, and then didn't take a work visa. So the company that I was working as a management consultant, they offered to give me a work visa. But I said no, I don't want it. Because I had this idea that if everything goes well and if I manage to find sufficient amount of capital and I learn enough things that I want to learn from that job and people around me, I probably move into building my own thing. So it was, it was, it was a conscious decision. It was not like, because I just got thrust into it because there is a startup visa.

So now coming to your business.

Uhhuh.

What is it you do and why? Actually, why this business?

So in very short, my business is called abjak. ABJAC is a micro food hall network. Micro food hall network. And what we do is we empower food entrepreneurs to scale their brands without the costs or the hassle of traditional models, at the same time offering choice and convenience to Consumers who are underserved. So it's a B2B to C model. The reason why I'm doing it, it's got a story to it. So I'll list the story. Growing up in India, you know, I think a lot of Indians, maybe you'll have that same perspective. Food is a part of the culture.

Yeah.

And it's, it's really ingrained into your, into your, you know, life. And I think we celebrate cultures through food as well. You know, certain special events, we know what kind food we are going to eat. So celebrations and festivals, etc. So that was always the case. And I love foodie, I'm a big time foodie. I used to be very chubby kid. I would like, when I get some food I go, can I have more? And then they go, yeah, first finish your food. Yeah, but so when I moved here my diet changed overnight. Obviously as in any other version, immigrants at that point in time I think there was about 10 million first gen immigrants. So that's about 15% of the UK's population. But there is nothing that addresses this problem. And I actually started having then sort of health issues because of the like sudden change in the diet, including like lactose intolerance, I think some other elements as well. So back in the university when I started, I spoke to a lot of students about it and a lot of my friends from different parts of the world and majority of them had some sort of issue with the food changes that they've had. And unless you're like coming from a very well off family, you can't really afford to go out and eat in the, in the best, almost authentic place out there. And authentic comes at a cost. So my initial idea was to bring authentic food to the students who were mostly the first gen immigrants. And I actually tried to think about it by, you know, think about it in the sense that, you know, we'll start a food business and we'll be able to serve, you know, students. And I was thinking, how do you have, you know, if there is like 15 different nationalities, how do you serve? You can't serve Indian food to somebody coming from Ghana for example. So how do you do that? And that's when you know, I went into the, you know, went into looking at how food businesses operate in the country, looking at different industries, different verticals, different how the same food business is operated in different countries of the world. And having that Indian experience actually helped me really understand food business much faster. You know, what are the, what are the moving parts here? So Initially I was thinking of building a subscription based meal delivery service for international students. That was the initial idea that I got the start of endorsement and for. But soon after I started talking to a lot of food entrepreneurs in Liverpool and I understood there was a much bigger problem there. The problem of food business being one of the most risky industries to get into. One of the, you know, the least margin rates of, of all businesses of all time and the fail rates are ridiculously high. So there is about 60 to 70% chance that you'll fail within the first year and I think this fail rate is about 80 to 90 within the first, first five years years. But there is, and so therefore there is like constant churn but there is always people thinking oh I can do a better job than them. And most people going into the business go into it without the full understanding of what is cash flow versus profits. So everybody, because it's a high topline industry, people think oh, I've got cash. And so therefore the business is going well. Not really. And even if it's a ten pound meal, you're paying 20, 22 pounds in tax, taxes and VAT as well. So when you look at it from that perspective, you know, really understanding the nitty gritties of how the business work, really understanding what are the things that drive business forward. Loads of micro macroeconomic reasons why businesses fail, not going into the details of that, but I understood that there needed to be a comprehensive solution, not really a plain solution to support you to get this, you know, get a, find a solution for this issue. So I looked at around the world and how this problem is solved. And technology and automation was one of the key areas through which like a lot of industries solved their problems. And manufacturing is a good example, you know, textile and fashion is a good example. So I looked at all these different industries and you know, because of the structured way that I was thinking, looking at things, being a consultant and having that international business, you know, degree to support me with my initial research, you know, so I sort of got to a point where I really got to a, a comprehensive ecosystem kind of thought process. But then obviously you can build, you can, you can say whatever you want, you can dream, whatever you want, but in the end you need cash to build out of it. You can't build Amazon in, in a day anyway. So we, we started focusing a lot more. At the start I was building an ecosystem that sort of helps, helps food entrepreneurs build and scale their food brands. And we initially obviously you can't download food. Yeah. So you need to have that infrastructure. So initially we set it up with dark kitchens. I was never going into the restaurant industry and the, the dark kitchens was, you know, a big trend at that time with more people doing deliveries after the COVID et cetera. But then figured out that dark kitchens is not the way to go forward. And then we later on, like this was last year. But when we started off we did try the subscription based meal Delivery. I had 200 week on week growth for about 7 weeks. Students? Just students? Yeah. No marketing, nothing. It's word of mouth and, but at the end of about five weeks there was a big churn and I was thinking what the hell's going on? And these were mostly Indian students because we were, we were, we were cooking up Indian food and we got a fantastic chef by the way. You know, I stole him from London to come up to Liverpool and it was a case of people get bored of the same cuisine. That's when I understood, wow, it needs to have different cuisines there. And then we started building multi brand or multi cuisine operations and that's when we understood nuances of okay, how can you use the same ingredients, ingredient or can you use the same equipment for doing multiple brands and cuisines? So I started speaking to a lot of people, found this, found this Michelin star chef who was advising me, although he's based in Dubai and spoke to a lot of food entrepreneurs out there. So we then tried out pub catering for example. You know, pubgoers obviously want food most of the time. Events catering. We catered to one of the biggest tech events called Slushed in, In. In Liverpool. Yeah, Liverpool, yeah. And we, we were sort of a contracted to cater for University of Liverpool, the local councils etc, etc. So it was going really well. But, and then, and that process, we actually supported some food entrepreneurs, including one of my friends to build their own food brands based on their cultures and cuisines. But then we also looked at adopting or licensing third party brands which has already got some traction in a different market to come the market without having to do anything. You know, we'll do the job for you. You get a percentage of whatever we make. But you know, you, you take on certain aspects. We take on certain aspects. So that was an ecosystem play.

But.

Obviously we need margins and you know, good healthy financial growth to actually, to showcase, you know, that we can actually build into what we want to do. So right now what we have so sort of boiled all that years of, you know, to, to, to just over two years of learning into this model that we have built. We're calling a micro food hall network. Micro food halls. Because you need to have variety and you need to have, you know, multiple choice and multiple sort of cuisines and, and brands and your food hall has those offers. But we are not in the business of building food halls in urban areas. There is almost no point to building more food business in urban areas because I, I think I mentioned density in city centers to be about one to 50. Every 50 person has got one food business for them, whereas every suburban area has got 350 to 400 people have got one food business.

Crazy.

So this is from primary research in the northwest. Figures might be different in down south, but still I think it will be the same region. So if you're going into a market where it's like really crowded with like loads of good quality, you know, brands out there, regardless of what's the footfall, you're not going to be keeping those customers loyal and what, what you want is long term loyalty for you to be profitable. So we were looking at gaps in the market. So we understood that from a operational perspective we wanted to have different brands and cuisines, which is what our expertise was in the last two years of running the dark kitchen and sort of explored in all these verticals. So we put that as a backend, centralized operations. Now then we looked at strategic locations. So what are these locations? These are suburban areas just out of city center senses. People, it's not too close enough so that they can go and pick it up whatever they want from the city center. But then people here are usually slightly older demographic with a family and they've got different needs, you know, they've got kids wanting different things to their, you know, mom and dad wanting different things etc, but they don't have access to a lot of different food brands. So that was a key market, you know, that was that we wanted to focus on. And also to reduce the capital expenditure we obviously look at formally QSI sort of sites, QSR and the quick service restaurant. So a former pizza, sort of Papa John's pizza or a former Domino's shop or a former McDonald's shop. You can't find mostly for McDonald's shop because everybody's, everybody loves Mac. Easy Ed, isn't it? So looking at formerly QSR places so that they're set up in a way that we can just go indoor and with minimal capex we can start running it. So that's the second part of it, the strategic location. And the third part of it is that we work with existing brand equity. So we work. So instead. So I said earlier that we were building and scaling brands but the building part, you know, the setting up a brand is the easy part but getting that recognition for that brand is the hard part. As you said, you know, it's a very noisy market out there with loads of food options. So we are currently focused on only the scale part. So we are looking at food entrepreneurs with one to four sites. They've got really good brand equity or brand recognition, really good playbook systems that like the menus and the margins and everything is out there and it's like plug and play almost. And they've got really good reviews and really good quality control systems. We adopt their model through a licensing agreement and then we plug that into our micro food halls and essentially that what that offers is instead of us having to build everything from scratch, we've, we are playing on their brand equity. So when they tell the, their consumer base that oh we've got a new site now but that's an ABJ micro food hall then we've got a lot more focus. So it's more multiple. So it's a, it's a triple attack in almost in, in that sense where people are hearing about this from multiple different channels and multiple different areas. So we, we work with the brand equity and the final part of it is the consumer part of it. Consumers want convenience and choice. You know, it's not one or the other. In a city center area you've got the choices and you've got the convenience of just eats deliveries and u sort of suburban centers, not really as much. In some parts of the UK you've got less than 15% of the market covered by these delivery platforms. And like it or not is a part of you know, the culture nowadays. But then in these areas, suburban areas where you don't have that kind of focus, you really are struggling for convenience factor. You've got to go in and pick it up or you got to, there's only eating or whatever it is. So we offer not only offline sort of through the micro food hall where you can walk in and order, but also a digital food hall. That's a, that's our website which is an E commerce platform but pretty much like just eat delivery Ubereats but you can order from multiple brands and cuisines in the same order. So there is no more sacrificing and you know, you know saying oh we'll, we'll all go for one cuisine today and we'll try different one. No if you want two different things, if you wanted three different things, you've all got the choice as kids want something, mom and dad want something else. It's all there, can have, eat in, takeaway, you know, delivery, everything. And we obviously market the platform as such. We market the microfood and supported by the digital food hall. But then the brands, they market their own brands and they say come to them, come to Abjax Micro Food all and we are there. So pretty much like we are building a sort of, what do you call it, a symbiotic relationship with our licenses or the brands that we work with and through the microfoodle and we want to build a network of microfoodles through these networks. We are actually going to increase their brand equity, the brand recognition and, and in terms of numbers, you've got to imagine between 100 to 200,000 that somebody has got to spend when they're scaling and to hit profitability they're spending a tenth of that with us to set up and they get to profitability within six to nine months. So unlike 12 to 18 months in some cases for standalone operations. So that's the biggest advantage for food entrepreneurs. But for us food entrepreneurs comes first because without them and their brands there is nothing for us to sell. So we're not in the restaurant business or hospitality business purely. We are in the business of offering a platform for food entrepreneurs to scale their brand and through that we reach consumers. So you know, consumers become a factor of our stills ecosystem. So that's pretty much where we are right now. And we've obviously sort of grown revenue wise and investment wise as well. Last year raised VCAP venture capital funding, some angel investments, some venture building. I've, I've gone through a couple of accelerator programs, et cetera. And the key part of it is that we don't, we know we're not building the business as a food business, we're building the business as a tech business. You know, so constantly iterating, constantly improving and we're building our own system so that you don't really have this 1% or 2% or 100 pounds there, 100 pounds here, fees that you've got to pay out to all these software systems. At one point we'll be mature enough to actually provide that as a service to others. But right now we've got tech systems at the back end of our E commerce platform. We've got loyalty programs and everything else that you could probably expect on an E commerce platform. But our systems actually collect all the Data from all the orders, connect that with all the purchasing for ingredients and it shows us exactly what the margins that we're making in real time.

Amazing.

And that then, you know, the kitchen display system, point of sale systems, kiosks, we do all of that technology, parts of it in house. So the idea is to build, build that as a food technology platform, you know, at the very back end of it. And that's like the, I'd say the very core of the business, if that makes sense.

It makes absolute sense. Thank you so much, first of all, for the detail that you played.

I mean, talking.

No, no, no, I know it's, it's quite interesting because this is something I've never come across. I mean, remember we, we when we spoke, well, before we spoke, I really thought this is a cloud kitchen, dark kitchen type of model, but obviously it's a, it's a, it's not. However, after. So thank you again for the explanation. Now, now I understand the business model, I appreciate that. Yeah. But it also, correct me if I'm wrong, but then why the pivot? Because I just feel as a business model, maybe the dark kitchen is a relatively. Nothing is easy, but a relatively simpler model for you to operate because you're a real estate, you know, providing a space, people come and come out, whatever, and you just.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, and you could somehow position that into a tech play because you know who's coming in, how much revenue they're making and so on. I don't know why the.

No, it's a good question. But the scenario is that when you're running a dark kitchen, you need to have loads of volumes and therefore you need to set it up close to urban centers, which means that you're competing with all of these other food brands out there, which means that your customer brands or your partner brands are not making enough money and that then affects your profitability. But then you're massively sort of relying on third party platforms like Just Eat Delaware UberEats. And again, like it or not, you've got to do it with them. You know, it's, it's very expensive to, to, to build you on your own, like the logistics systems in a city area especially. And the issue is that they charge you 35%, 25, 35, 45%, you know, sometimes 50%, including all the promotions, VAT and everything else. So half the money that you're making, you don't even get to see it. So essentially that then affects the profitability of dark kitchens. So the dark kitchens actually worked when there was a massive sort of, of, I wouldn't say massive. There was like literally 90% of the transactions were only for online deliveries at the time when it was like post Covid, it worked fantastically well. But I think what for, for most food businesses or most food brands to work, you need direct sales through your own platform. So that you've got. Because as I said, it's a very low margin that you're playing with. So you, you've got to make sure that you've got some direct revenues coming through the business. And also for the fact that we wanted to do, we wanted to build something that we could exponentially grow, grow without like very long lead times to profitability. We wanted to go into areas where there isn't a lot of competition. We wanted to make some, build something completely unique that's not out there and there is nobody else. You know, we, we built the UK's first micro food all last month in December. So essentially that all of these elements, you know that consumers coming directly to you going into a market without competition, competition going into a market where there is underserved, lower lead times to profitability or you know, being cash flow positive. These are all the elements that we've considered and it's not really a pivot for us. It's like a strategic upgrade, I would say because we went from having no face to having a face in a better market. So we're doing the exact same. Makes sense, but we're doing it better now, if that makes sense.

Do you also now take care of the delivery of the food?

Yeah, because in suburban areas, as I said, some of the delivery platforms are less than 15 integrated into some, some markets and then you don't have on demand delivery services like Uber Direct or Stuart in some, some of the markets that we, we plan to go into. So sometimes you've got to do that, you know, and you know, last mile logistics yourself. But the main part of it is that we, because it's in a smaller neighborhood or a suburban market and you don't have to wade through traffic to get to those places, most people from our own experience are happy to come and pick it up.

Okay.

So we obviously encourage people to do that, incentivize them to do that. Our delivery cost remains low. But that's something that, you know, we're conscious about. It adds a slightly more complex, slight bit more complexity. But when you compare that and the hassle of building that versus losing out on all the, you know, the margins that you would have otherwise I definitely pick the logistics path.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And strategically as well. You're geographically graphic, choice makes sense. Suburban areas because you don't have enough options and so on, you know. So, fun fact, I actually ran a chain of restaurants when I was in Dubai for a couple of years and it was probably one of the most horrible experience I had running in any business. And I've ran multiple, you know, different types of businesses. Yeah, I think it was also really horrible because I took over from a previous owner and was just. And it was one of those as well. I was so young. I was. And then people who are twice my age been there for like 20, 30 years reporting into me. So the whole dynamic. But I first. So I have firsthand experience of running, running a food business and it's ruthless. Like you're talking about the margins and everything else. And since then, I always had this aspiration to, oh, one day I'm going to open a restaurant again. And it. And it comes from the place where, you know, you spoke about your mom. So again, my mom, I think, I think for the most part all of us think that, you know, our moms are the best chefs of. In the world. You know, obviously, I'm sure you like this as well. 100%. So it was one of those. I'm like, oh, you know, like I somehow I want to open a restaurant where it would be my mom's cuisine and that would be her legacy. You know, after she's gone, you know, people world over could eat her food. But every single time I think of it, emotionally, it feels night. But then boom. My. The. Yeah, my, my logical brain kicks in and I'm like, oh, my God, that's like the shittiest business. I never want to get it. But after everything that you've said, I'm just thinking, so. So the one thing also I think is great in this business. Business is because I'm thinking from a food entrepreneur. If I'm on this platform and I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 businesses, other types of cuisines I can also leverage from their success. So, for example, if somebody's thinking about pizza and I'm selling Indian, even if you're not thinking about Indian, but now.

You can see that, oh, shit.

Oh, let me get a curry also whilst I get a pizza, which is fantastic. So there's a network effect from. Exactly.

So it's not really so on our platform. Platform. It's not really exactly ordering based on brands. So when you go to just the delivery ubereuse, you've got to go into one sort of shop window to actually order from that shop window and add to that cart and you've got to finish that whole process out. Ours is not the same. Ours is. You can choose all the brands or you can choose one brand, you know, however you like and then you can filter it out and say I want something with chicken in it, I want something that's less than 20 quid, I want something that's not got any meat in it, it's like completely vegan. And everything across all the brands that you've selected comes there and you've got one car.

It's amazing.

Yeah. And you've got to just do it once and there is some ideas to actually build some AI agents is the future, isn't it so sure to like completely voice controls ordering and everything. But you know, I, I, I, I'm very divergent thinker in that sense, you know, looking at, look at everything that's going out there and see like how, how can we maximize the opportunity here? Can we optimize for what is going to be the next, you know, trend out there? Not being a trend chaser but like some sort of a, what you call it, a consistent trend that can stay on a fancy approach.

Absolutely, yeah. And, and you know, just coming back to you know, the food entrepreneurs. So another reason, like every time, single time, my logical brain kicks in because again, first of all, you know, it's the highest, a high capex and then the high opex and then you have the probability of success which for most businesses is minuscule. But I mean something here, plus you are dealing with perishable items and it's just, it's just problems after problems. Yeah, but in this model you can somehow, you know, bootstrap your way into this ecosystem and then leverage the power of the ecosystem and the network effect and so on. So I think, I think it's phenomenal. I believe, I don't know if you think, think but I mean it gives, it gives a lot of, you know, aspiring food entrepreneurs to actually take that first, first step.

Yeah, no it's, it's, you know, I really appreciate your comments and that's exactly what we want and I've not really done a good job with marketing and brand building. That's something that we're focused on right now.

That's what you're here.

I thought I was still here for a chance, but yeah, absolutely, it's, it's a case of getting the, getting the message out there. So more and more people Talk about, about it. And we've already had conversations, you know, way beyond Liverpool and Manchester, we've had conversations with people in Bath, in Leicester, Birmingham, you know, all of those places where we are having conversations with food entrepreneurs and we want to have the pipeline for before we start launch the next site, you know. So right now it's mostly at the scale ready businesses but what we want to do is to absolutely support people to start their, you know, their dream business. You know, if it's, if it's something to do with the food. We've got ambitions to go into retail and everything later down the line but then right now completely focused on scaling businesses. So if you've got something that's successful, if you've got something successful independently, you, you, you don't need to have 10 sides, you need to have one successful independent brand and you've got some good level of marketing and brand equity and recognition out there and you've got ambition to, to scale your brand. You've got some scalable systems systems. That's, that's the kind of people that we work with at the moment. So yeah, in, in terms of, and, and in terms of, you know, looking at wastage and sustainability and that kind of elements as well, we cross utilize as many ingredients as we possibly can without compromising on the quality. So about 60 to 70% of ingredients that goes into any cuisine in the kitchen is exactly the same.

Amazing.

So that's, that's quick cuisine engineering that we've, you know, you, we, we got our, you know, our culinary advisors to actually sort of teach us how to do it. So in every aspect of the business, be it, you know, the, the sales channels to operations, to procurement, to the food operations as in the food preparation. You know, we've, we've tried to optimize as many aspects of it. Even, you know, most, most businesses, most food businesses try to optimize it once they get to like 5, 10 sites and then they start thinking about okay, we started off with that idea like we started off with the, with the idea that, you know, how can we showcase that we can build a business that has got very good sort of management practices, very good operational sort of margins, very good sort of scalability potential compared to a traditional model. And that's what sets us apart in that sense. If, if, if I'm making sense.

Yeah, you are you. I mean, I mean, I absolutely love it. I mean, thank you so much for, thank you for getting to so much depth of your entire business model.

I think, I hope boring to think is fantastic.

I love it, I love it from a perspective simply because, oh my God, like every other day I'm like, oh, I want to start a restaurant or should this just do what's heading like this is phenomenal. I think what you're doing is fantastic. Thank you. You know, I wish you all the best. You know, you, you, you keep scaling around the country, around the globe. I think, I think you are, you are solving. Hopefully we see the divorce rates also lower thanks to you. There will be a lot of testimonials off the back of it, but. Yeah, no, I mean, it's fantastic what you're doing. Just, just one last question from. Yeah, yeah, of course. So going back, going back in time before you decided to take the move or make the move to the uk, you're Rudy in India. You've obviously achieved a lot since, since that time. What would you tell that Rudy today?

Well done for taking that risk. But because I think I've, I've generally struggled with low self esteem and, you know, sort of an imposter syndrome and insufficiency complex or whatever you want to call it. I've never really thought of my, my story being worthy of being talked about or been inspiring to other people. But the, the, the, the goal is ease and wars at that time was to figure out for myself, it was not to show to anyone, to myself, what can I achieve from the obvious disadvantages that I grew up from? I'm glad that something, something is, is shareable. You know, it's, it's about, it's always about collective knowledge, isn't it? There is nothing, there is no original stuff out. Everything is repurposed stuff.

Yeah.

And I think these are lessons that they probably got from somewhere else or through their life lessons. And for me, is it exactly the same way? You know, it's, it's, you learn through structured knowledge, you learn through applying that knowledge, you learn through shared knowledge, mentorship, friendship, companionship, whatever it is. And then you learn through individual learning. Books, you know, books. I think I haven't seen a successful person who is, who's not read at least a thousand books in their lives.

Yeah, that's so true.

It's, it's very much, it's very much on this learning from other people's lessons because we've got such a short life, isn't it?

And also learning by sharing exactly what you share.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, so hopefully, hopefully you're sharing today is going to help a lot of people. I know it's helped me as well and I wish you all the best Rudy like what you're building is fantastic I can't wait for you to come to London as well I can order and my friends can order as well so no but it's just fantastic no.

Absolutely you can feel anytime you're up in Liverpool you know give me a shout and we we should definitely hang out more I think you know you're doing a fantastic job with the likewise with the with the platform for immigrant entrepreneurs which is something that I've I've been thinking about it but you you take it the first step and this is this is an amazing amazing platform and really fantastic questions really love the plot the the way in which you record and you know get it out there for people to enjoy as well so hopefully the lessons have been or what I've learned that I've shared has been is helpful for other people as well and good luck to both of.

Our business yes absolutely yeah absolutely thank.

You so much thanks thanks very much than very cure.