Grinding It Out

After being relegated to the margins, the maker of Karbonn mobiles is fighting back with a four-pronged attack. Will the gambit pay off?

- Rajiv Singh

At 52, Ray Kroc was taking the boldest and riskiest bet of his life. After two decades of being a salesman—selling paper cups and milkshake machines—part-time pianist and real estate agent, the plucky American had opened his first McDonald’s franchisee outlet at Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955. The unlikeliest candidate anybody would hedge money on, Kroc had survived the First World War and had seen his father amass and lose his fortune in speculation and stocks.

Six years later, in 1961, Kroc went on to buy McDonald’s. “Achievement must be made,” the unflinching entrepreneur wrote in his autobiography Grinding it Out, “against the possibility of failure, against the risk of defeat. Where there is no risk, there can be no pride in achievement, and consequently, no happiness.”

Cut to India. At 50, Pardeep Jain is doing a Kroc. “He has an inspirational story of never giving up in spite of multiple failures,” says the managing director of the Jaina Group, which had hit a high in early 2014 when the maker of the Karbonn mobile cornered a 10 percent market share, making it the third biggest smartphone brand in India.

Five years later, fortune has swung to the other end. Karbonn, along with other homegrown handset players like Micromax, Intex, and Lava, has been muscled out by Chinese smartphone players such as Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo. Jaina Group, which boasted of a revenue of ₹3,456 crore in fiscal 2017, hit a new low of ₹1,243 crore two years later.

“If Kroc can dream big at 52, so can I at 50,” says Jain, flashing a small red-yellow book cover with golden arches.