Meet Neeraj Kakkar, Gurgaon-educated CEO of Paper Boat backed Narayan Murthy

Neeraj Kakkar is the CEO and co-founder of Hector Beverages, a company that manufactures Paper Boat drinks. The company whose products are known for their unique Indian taste, had raised 50 million dollars in August last year.  He recently said in an event that raising money at high valuations can be counterproductive for entrepreneurs as they try to live up to that valuation from the very next day. He said he was celebrated for hitting a high valuation but it cost him "sleepless nights".

In 2020, they raised money at a valuation of Rs 600 crore. Last year, the didn't released their valuation but some media reports suggest over 200 million dollars.

Who is Neeraj Kakkar?

Neeraj Kakkar founded the company in 2009. His company also produces Tzinga Energy drink. The company is headquartered in Bengaluru.

Kakkar was the General Manager in the Coca-Cola company before that.

Did his MBA from The Wharton School, the United States. He did his MBA from Gurgaon's Management Development Institute.

He launched the company with a seed capital of Rs 2.5 crore. His co-founders were -- Suhas Misra, James Nuttall and Neeraj Biyani. Their first product was Tzinga, an energy drink. They later launched Paper Boat that became a cult product.

In an old interview, he said his inspiration was Suhas Misra who was his junior at Coca-Cola. He said he became an entrepreneur three years before him.

He said Kanwaljit Singh, co-founder at Helion ventures, was one of his three inspirational figures. It was him who said food was the best sector to start a business. He was also their angle investor. The second was his former colleague Shripad Nadkarni, who was the Head of Marketing at Coca-Cola. The third is Infosys founder Narayan Murthy who is an early investor. He said he had been a guiding force behind the company. He had said that the icon never interfered with their work but always had viewpoints on value systems.

He had said that once Narayan Murthy wrote that it took him 33 years to make Infosys a billion dollar company. However, the next billion come in just 18 months.

Kakkar lives in Bengaluru.