Burger Singh wants to be the Domino's of burgers, says Kabir Jeet Singh

It all started as an exercise to spice-up his burger meal while pursuing a Masters in Business Administration and working part-time at a fish and chip outlet in Birmingham, UK. After a few professional stints including one with a beer cafe start-up in India, the idea of 'Burger Singh' - a quick service restaurant (QSR) offering Indianised burgers - began taking shape. The first outlet opened in November 2014 at Gurgaon. Founder and chief executive officer Kabir Jeet Singh, in an interview with Ashish K Tiwari, speaks about the company's journey, overall business, fund raising and expansion plans among others. 

How has your QSR business shaped up over the last five years?

It's been good. After launching the first outlet in Gurgaon and achieving breakeven in three months, we raised some funds through friends and family and launched three more outlets by August 2015. Our aim has always been to start with one market, dominate it and then look at adding other markets. The business started growing and we raised Rs 2.5 crore from members of India Angel Network in December 2015 to enter the Delhi market. Successively, between 2016 and 2017-end, we also raised more funds from the same set of investors. All in all, we'd raised about Rs 8 crore. The number of outlets between Gurgaon and Delhi increased to 11 by December 2017. We again raised a slightly larger sum of Rs 20 crore from Angelworks in January 2018. We are still deploying that capital and have some bit of it still left. All this has given us a scale of 27 company-owned and operated outlets in the national capital region. We have one outlet in Jaipur and the second one is in the works and, two outlets in Dehradun. We have also entered the UK market with two outlets in Central London. A combination of delivery (35%-odd) and dine-in, it's owned and managed by our franchisee partner in the UK.

What are the factors that differentiate your offerings from competitors?

The core of Burger Singh is that it's a completely Indianised product including chana, rajma burgers, Kerala-style vegetarian burgers, Bihari gosht burger. Then, there are customised blends coming from one single source made especially for us. We also have intellectual property (IP) rights for the recipes for all these burgers. Unlike what's available in the market, ours is a larger-sized burger sold at 10-20% premium. Our idea of the business is to be profitable and not get into the marketing/promotional gimmicks adopted by the American chains. Operational in standalone high street locations, the Burger Singh business is predominantly delivery, takeaway and very small dine-in focused so malls don't really make for an operationally-efficient option. Besides, my view is that you cannot build a brand in a mall food court. The focus from the beginning was delivery and takeaway as we wanted to be the Domino's of burgers. We didn't want to do a 5,000 square feet outlet akin to McDonald's, KFC, etc. The Subway model really works for our business – small outlets, road-facing signage, easy-to-execute and deliver everywhere. Our outlets are 350 to 400 square feet in size and a majority of it gets occupied by the kitchen.

What are your expansion plans?

In the UK market, we are targeting 18 outlets over the next three years i.e, till 2021. Our existing partner will roll out the newer outlets there. We are spending $2.5 million for that territory to establish a good footprint. In India, the plan is to add another 20 outlets in the NCR region. We have started operations in Maharashtra in a small way with a pilot in Pune and a franchisee-owned and operated outlet in Nagpur. We now want to spread wings in Maharashtra and roll out over 30 outlets over the next 12 to 18 months. Similarly, we will be looking to start operations in Goa, followed by South India i.e, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mysuru and so on.

You'll need to raise more money then.

Yes, we are in advanced talks to raise a large sum of Rs 50 crore or more. The transaction will get concluded within the first quarter of fiscal 2020. The company promoters still hold about 50% in Burger Singh and the Series B round will require us to dilute about 15%. We are fine with it as it will help build the business further and scale it in a viable manner.

Have you achieved profitability?

All our stores are Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) positive. We should close this fiscal with a turnover of Rs 30 crore; the exit run rate is around Rs 40 crore. With all the expansion planned in the coming fiscal, we should be able to close fiscal 2020 with revenues of Rs 115-130 crore.