Inspiring Personalities - Mr.Thirupathi Raja - Founder Adyar Ananda Bhavan

INSPIRING PERSONALITIES – MR.THIRUPATHI RAJA

Today I will be sharing about another inspiring personality. It’s a sweet success story. It’s a sweet stall in Chennai and took the ADYAR name to the world. Many of us got it by this time. A2B, yes it is.. Adyar Ananda Bhavan. Just read about Mr.Thirupathi Raja – the founder of Adyar Ananda Bhavan. Here I go :

It all began in a Rajapalayam farmer's family. Thirupathi Raja ran away to Madras when he was 10, cleaned tables, learned cooking, went to Bombay, worked in a mill and a provision store, but returned to Rajapalayam to start a sweet shop and grow sugarcane. The crop was destroyed in a cyclone and Raja came to Washermanpet in Chennai in 1979 with a recipe to sell sweets/mixture in individual paper-folds. He was then married and  two sons whom he involved in his business. In 1988, he opened the “corner” shop on Lattice Bridge Road junction. It was a big success. Sri Ananda Bhavan morphed into Adyar Ananda Bhavan. And the brand was launched. At 60, Raja finally saw profit.

His sons Venkatesan and Srinivasa Raju have to be persuaded to continue the story. “Go around and see what we do,” they say. Srinivasa Raju answers the “secret of success” query with, “It's the taste, right proportion of ingredients and price.” It's also the location of shops — the one on MG Road, Adyar is a hit with passers-by — with attached parking lots to let eaters linger on. Venkatesh visits Ambattur every day, tastes the stuff, stops production if he isn't happy. “Customer feedback is taken seriously,” says Raju.

Customers asked if they sold kuzhippaniyaram/poli/jelebi and demanded “hot, fresh” food. They would buy and go next door to eat it so “we had to open a restaurant”. An experimental one opened in Puducherry , the sweet-seller became restaurateur. “We popularised the open-kitchen concept,” says Raju. The Pondy experience emboldened them to serve Kannadiga sambar with dosa in Bengaluru. In Chennai, “We were one of the first to bring masters from the North to make Rajasthani/Bengali sweets and chaat. They were instant hits.”

“What next?” Idiyappam/kurma, adai-avial, mini-kozhukkattai and kadamba dosai. Adyar ice-cream became a sister concern, no-egg bakery products and other items in vacuumed packaging began to be sold. The company registered 62 outlets, in Bengaluru, Delhi, Puducherry, in all Tamil Nadu districts. Batch-wise data is updated, products are bar-coded. HQ knows production time, date, which batch is made by whom, the shelf life. “We branched, experimented, but kept at the core business of selling food in various forms,” says Raju.

Future plans include ready-to-use pastes, pickles, powders and vadagams and global marketing. “Our new Austrian machine with thermal control does mixing, frying (1,000 kg savoury/hour) and squeezing out oil. The factory is moving into new premises for total automation. We'll sell our own brand of coffee and milk. The aim is to be one of the best in the industry,” says Raju.

Source : The Hindu