Pizza Square

I, Rahul Gupta have been an entrepreneur since 2004 with over ten years extensive experience and keen interest specially in the Quick Service Restaurant operations as well as Institutional Catering side of Hospitality business. I am the C.E.O. of Sara Foods, handling two prominent and well renowned brands Pizza Square and Gourmet Square which are into Quick Service Restaurant’s and Institutional Catering respectively.

I did my academic specialisation in Information Technology after completing my further education from University of Canberra, Australia in 2003. Soon after returning to India I gained invaluable experience by assiting my father in the family business which was primarily into food products distribution, logistics and warehousing to various hotels, restaurants and caterers in the DELHI/N.C.R region. Here I got hands on approach to various aspects of business as well as intricate knowledge of  our customers busineses. Besides assisting my father in the family business I started working and researching on the Indian fast food industry and found an oppurtunity in the Italian Q.S.R.(Quick Service Restaurants) segment. I found that the U.S. fast food and restaurant market was in excess of $ 500 billion industry in 2004. This was a huge oppurtunity as the Indian market was at a very nascent stage and just warming up.

The market was hungry for new concepts, cuisines and formats and this is when SARA Foods was born, which was going to be the main entity holding various food service brands under its umbrella.

I found my niche in fresh hand made italian food mainly consisting of Pizzas, Pasta and Salad’s, and that’s how ‘Pizza Square’ was born, and YES we were making Square Pizzas indeed. Big players like Dominos and Pizza Hut had just entered the market and they looked very upbeat about their India plans with agressive expansion plans geographically. With more and more people travelling abroad, there was a lot of awareness already for the products we offered. There was a genuine need of quality international food products and services at reasonable and affordable prices.

With borrowed funding of Rs 1.5 million Indian rupees from family and friends and most importantly with a passion for excellence, Pizza Square started its operations in 2004 with a small 900 sq ft, 24 seater dine in cum delivery outlet at Chittranjan park, one of the biggest Bengali communities in Delhi. It employed 15 employees including a Chef, Helpers, Delivery staff and serving staff.

When you are just starting out problems come early too and we had our bit of fair share of them as well. However, hard work, commitment, extra long working hours and team work got us out of all the teething problems and we sailed through with shining colours.

Pizza Square clocked revenues of over 2 million indian rupees in just over a year of operation without making any profit in its first year. The revenues doubled up with each passing year. The company broke even in 2006 and started making healthy profits from 2006-2007 financial year onwards. Revenues rose to 31 million Indian rupees in 2009-2010 financial year with 10 million Indian rupees in gross profits. Last audited financial years(2012-2013) revenue figures were in excess of 45 million Indian rupees. Gross profit declined a bit as a result of capacity expansion, strategic infrasture investments and other prevalent market conditions.