Serving up an ace

HOW A LOVE AFFAIR WITH KOLKATA'S FAMED KATHI ROLLS GAVE BIRTH TO A UNICORN

- S SHANTHI

DURING HIS YOUNGER days, Jaydeep Barman, the 51-year-old co-founder of Rebel Foods, was fond of "football, food and laziness". While the first two remain an abiding passion — the second one, in fact, has reaped rich dividends in his professional life — Barman has obviously given up on his fondness for the third one. For, laziness certainly can't be associated with a co-founder who in a span of 20 years has turned a 100 sq feet delivery/takeaway store in Pune into a food brand whose operating revenue in FY24 was over ₹1,400 crore.

Investors have backed him to the hilt. Starting with a $1.37-million seed round from Peak XV (then Sequoia), Rebel has to date raised over $773 million in funding across 20 rounds. The Mumbai-based company has 8,000 employees and is backed by marquee names such as KKR and Temasek, among others. The company is hoping to launch an initial public offer in the next 12-18 months.

But Barman wears success lightly. "A lot of entrepreneurs whom I know had a spark even when they were very young, but I didn't have any," he says in a matter-of-fact tone, and then proceeds to give examples of his "ordinary-ness". A BTech from Jadavpur University, Barman admits his academic performance was quite mediocre but he is proud of the fact that he developed a keen interest in mountaineering, a passion that has stayed on.

After completing his engineering in 1996, Barman got into IIM Lucknow but couldn't bag lucrative job offers and had to settle for Mirc Electronics, the maker of Onida televisions. He was posted in Siliguri and spent most of his time trekking instead of the job he was supposed to do — that is selling TVs.