Mr. Sanjeev Kapoor, Indian celebrity chef, and a successful entrepreneur, is among those who hold rich experience of transforming a personality-driven business into a successful platform-driven business. - A doctor earns only that much money as many patients he checks, - A Chartered Accountant earns only that much money as many returns he files - A lawyer earns only that much money as many cases he fights - An architect earns only that much money as many buildings he made - An astrologer earns only that much money as many customers he gets - A chef earns only that much money as many recipes he made But, Sanjeev Kapoor is earning much more money than the recipes he made. >_How?_ When an individual professional is converted into a: - Platform - Business model - Method You can earn money and grow your business while sitting in your home or relaxing on a beach as Sanjeev Kapoor does. Sanjeev Kapoor has: - Market capitalization of Rs. 1000 crores - Awarded with Padma Shree - Became popular Chef at the age of 27 - Started the popular TV show Khana Khazana in 1993 - Started a business of kitchen appliances – WonderChef (which is taken care by the CEO, Mr. Ravi Saxena) - Revenue of Rs. 225 crores - Manpower of 3000 people - 650 employees in WonderChef Mr. Sanjeev Kapoor shares the strategies and methods he used to convert his personality driven business into a successful business model, which would be also helpful for those who want to turn their passion into a business model. # **Work on Core Values** Before you attempt to transform your passion into business, as Mr. Kapoor suggests you need to work on the following core areas: - **`Develop Specialty:`** You need to develop your specialty in the area you want to start your business. - **`Mass Reach:`** Spreading your reach among masses is the next important step you need to work on. - **`Product:`** As your reach start increasing, you can convert this specialty into different products and services. Mr. Kapoor has himself worked on all the above core areas and when it comes to converting his specialty (a Chef) into product or services, then he goes into the restaurant business. It is the most related and obvious business. He opened his first restaurant in Dubai 20 years ago and named it as Khazana by Sanjeev Kapoor. As it was his first restaurant, so, he has done everything himself including: - Building a business structure - Making Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) - Building high performance team - Making marketing strategy - Pricing, design, and location - Registering Intellectual Property rights He has taken Intellectual Property rights on his recipes and wanted to franchise them. But, people said how he can build a franchise when he doesn’t have any other restaurant. Sanjeev Kapoor replied that he will franchise his brand, knowledge, and IP. People argued that Proof of Concept needs to be given for franchising. Mr. Kapoor said that his Proof of Concept includes: - Best Chef of the Country - His Reach - His Recall Value - His Knowledge He will franchise based on the above pointers. # **Develop Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) in Khazana by Sanjeev Kapoor** When the first time Mr. Sanjeev Kapoor made SOPs for his restaurant, he gives detail of each and everything including the restaurant’s design, location, clientele or target customers, pricing, positioning, etc. Along with all these SOPs, their respective teams are built to execute the processes. He also decides what will be upgraded in teams and processes in advance. Initially, the team was very small. There were only 1.5 people with Mr. Sanjeev Kapoor to work with. So, Mr. Kapoor needs to do everything and he gave his maximum time to the restaurant. When the restaurant was opened, he needed to be in Dubai for 60 days. Though he planned to be there for only 5 days but when he was not confident that the restaurant was settled. So, he gives 55 more days to it. Being a full service restaurant, Mr. Sanjeev Kapoor is supposed to manage 300-350 variables everyday. Detailing of all these 300-350 variables is determined and documented. This includes the detailing of every single and minute thing. For example, the detailing of tomatoes purchased for making butter chicken will include: - How many tomatoes will be used? - How reddish should be the tomato? - Will the tomatoes are overripe? - Whether tomatoes with more seeds or tomatoes with more flesh should be used? All the above things need to be defined with detail. Similarly, all the other ingredients of every recipe are detailed out from the very first day of the Sanjeev Kapoor’s restaurant. To monitor and control these processes, Sanjeev Kapoor has built 3 levels of audit: - **Internal audit team** - **external audit team** - **Customers/public reviews or feedback** ### **Yellow Chilli Restaurant** Sanjeev Kapoor has started his second restaurant “The Yellow Chilli Restaurant” in Ludhiana after 2 years of opening his first restaurant. Sanjeev Kapoor visits “The Yellow Chilli Restaurant” for the first time when it was completely ready. But, he didn’t like the interior designs. So, the interiors are completely changed according to Sanjeev Kapoor’s requirement and they have repositioned the brand. The restaurant is still there in Ludhiana and it has been started 18-19 years ago. Sanjeev Kapoor builds his personality as well as platform simultaneously. This is one of the reasons of his success. - Mr. Kapoor published and sold millions of books. - He has been number one author in India. - Hosted many TV shows on food content. - He has started his website in 1996. - He has also made CDs on his cooking recipes. He was not only dependent on promotions through print, TV and internet medium. Because, if TV Channels close their channel or stops his show, then what he will do? So, Sanjeev Kapoor started his own TV channel, “Food FOOD”.  Today, the reach of this channel is 40 million. He has invested Rs. 180 crores in the channel till date. Despite of initial hurdles, the TV channel is now in profit from last three years. ### Publishing Sanjeev Kapoor creates food content for both B2C business and B2B business. - He has published various books on food. - He also provides food content to big companies like Microsoft. - As a Chef, he is the Largest Partner of Amazon Alexa globally. He focused on sending his content to masses by not only developing his own platform but also using others platform. He not only does TV shows but he also started a weekly show on Radio City, which is broadcasted in 35 cities. His objective is to create mass reach of food content. So, he has built traffic first and then made business models. ### **WonderChef** While starting WonderChef the first focus of Sanjeev Kapoor is to decide the principles on which it will be based. The principles he selected are: - Health - Taste - Convenience After that, they identify the gap in India and what uniqueness they can build. So, they decided to: - Making smart and innovative products - Providing health and tasty food. - Providing convenience to the customers. - Making the Indian kitchen front of the house instead of back of the house. - Making the kitchen hygienic and pride of the house. WonderChef is taken care by the CEO of Sanjeev Kapoor, Mr. Ravi Saxena, who is a pass out of Delhi College of Engineering and completed his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. Mr. Ravi Saxena focuses on building all the pillars of business, which includes: - How to do distribution? - How should the product be marketed? - How to execute the daily business activities? # Summary Following are the important strategies that Mr. Kapoor used to transform his personality driven business into a platform: - Focus on core values of personality: - Skill - knowledge - Value system - Work with partners who bring sharpness in business. - Bring best professionals into the business. - Define the exact role of the team. Using the powerful methods given by Mr. Sanjeev Kapoor, you will also be able to transform your profession into a successful business model.