House of F&B brands

CUREFOODS CAPITALISED ON THE OPPORTUNITY TO BUILD A LARGE HOMEGROWN FOOD BUSINESS

- S SHANTHI

ANKIT NAGORI, CEO and founder of Curefoods, was only 24 when he joined Flipkart in February 2010. It was a large startup, hyper-funded, and there was never a cash crunch. Joining a company like that so early on and rising to the position of chief business officer in no time was a breakthrough moment for Nagori. "That kind of opportunity is rare. If you get it, you make the most out of it," he says. Nagori spent every day at Flipkart, building and scaling new businesses. "My six-seven-year stint at Flipkart was almost equal to 20 years in any company. Binny (Bansal) has been a mentor ever since," he says.

This exposure to a fast-paced startup culture motivated Nagori to try out entrepreneurship, something he had once attempted soon after graduating from IIT Guwahati way back in 2007. He had launched a social media sentiment analysis startup called Youthpad. Though the venture didn't quite take off, Nagori says IIT Guwahati was like a launchpad. "You are exposed to things at IIT that you normally don't get access to—clubs, communities and more. This is where I also started reading up a lot about internet companies such as PayPal, Amazon, eBay and Facebook," he says.