In a podcast named ‘The Neon Show’ podcast, Musthafa PC, the founder & CEO of packaged food giant iD Fresh Food revealed that his father earned a meagre income of just Rs 10 every day, which was barely sufficient to sustain the family.
Self-made success stories are most special and inspiring as they have witnessed various ups and downs in life, but one consistent thing is their attitude to succeed. One such inspiring success story is that of PC Musthafa, the CEO of iD Fresh Food, a Rs 3,000 crore company which he built from scratch.
Musthafa belongs to a lower-middle-class family in Kerala's Wayanad, his father used to work as a daily wage labourer and only earned ₹10 per day working in a ginger farm. This compelled Mustafa and his siblings to do odd jobs to sustain their family like selling firewood in his village, at age of 10. He finally made ₹150 to make and made his first financial investment. "I saved every penny and bought a goat. That was the first asset in my family," he said.
He then sold the goat to buy a cow for his family. Then, the family was finally able to eat three meals a day as the milk from the cow yielded some money.
Some savings and small investments helped him to get admission to the National Institute of Technology (NIT), and pursue a degree in computer science. Thereafter, he got an IT job at Motorola and then moved to Citibank in Dubai.
Thereafter, he returned to India and pursued an MBA at the esteemed Indian Institute Of Management, Bangalore. During his MBA, Musthafa, in collaboration with his cousins, embarked on a venture to manufacture dosa and idli batter.
Later, in collaboration with his cousins, he began his own breakfast foods company which supplied ready-to-eat packaged food- iD Fresh Foods in 2005, with a capital of Rs 50,000. Later, they diversified and began supplying idli and dosa batter, which was a game-changer move.
"We Indians don’t trust our packaged food. Anything in a package form is considered unhealthy. When we launched the product in the market, we were surprised, no one was willing to buy a package of batter. We started sending 100 packets to the market, and 90 used to come back," he said.
Gradually, the sales of iD Fresh Foods soared and it became a popular name in breakfast foods. Musthafa explained that what set his brand apart is that they didn’t use any chemicals in his pre-made batter.
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