Manish Tripathi | Entrepreneur
Manish started his career in India with Grand Hyatt, New Delhi after completing his degree in Hotel Management. Just when Manish was moving up the ladder with Grand Hyatt, he was offered a scholarship to pursue a Masters degree in “Hospitality and Marketing” at Johnson & Wales University, USA. At the university he was a fellow, teaching undergraduate students. Being a high achiever, he was recruited as a General Manager for Holiday Inn, Orlando, Florida at a campus hire. This role at Holiday Inn won Manish an award for the youngest GM by the American Hotel and Lodging association. In 2004, Manish moved back to India and started working for Yum India, handling their training team for their Pizza Hut restaurants. As fate would have it, in 2007 Manish packed his bags to move to Australia.
He landed a job with KFC and worked there in a management position for six years. “During my tenure, I was awarded various awards for having the best profit centre restaurant,” he says. In 2013, he decided to venture into entrepreneurship. “After clearing 12 rounds of interviews I became a franchise with KFC,” he says.
“It means a lot to be an Indian entrepreneur in Australia, because you get to take the best of both cultures—blend the opportunities in Australia with work ethics from India. It means we are able to serve our community in a foreign land,” he says.
Always loo newer opportunities, a few years ago, Manish identified a massive gap in the Australian market and decided to venture into finance and launched FINN Business Brokers in South Australia. “My wife helped me with the business and we slowly acquired the whole South Australian market. I then started another company called “BAC & Company”, which was primarily formed to make business plans and forecasts, as a lot of Business Plans were rejected by banks for not being ‘realistic’ or ‘in accordance with the business’,” says Manish. The business plans and cash flow projections prepared by his company has a 90% success rate at the bank. “We slowly worked our way into commercial lending and became introducers with major banks and started commercial lending. At this stage, we have also started consulting for small businesses mainly for streamlining their business and increasing their profit margins,” he says.
The way I see it
The single most important moment in my career… When my KFC store did a complete turnaround and projected a profit of 25% in the first year. The store was running at a loss when I took it over from the franchisor
Growth… Is like progressive development. It is the combination of development and expansion in segments like competency, cultural systems, values, work-life balance and so on
A book I recommend… The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
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