Vikaas Gutgutia, MD, Ferns ‘N’ Petals group, loves to look at vast expanse of flower-filled farm house from his first floor office. FNP Gardens doubles up as the company’s head office.
“It looks beautiful in bright sunshine in winter mornings, he says. That’s an understatement coming from a man who has built a Rs 100-crore business around flowers. In the last 13 years, FNP has ventured into event management and e-commerce with flowers being integral to each.
That’s set to change. Vikaas has now entered a brand new world of Chatak Chaat, a street food chain launched recently. He also plans to enter hospitality training and man-power business. Considering Gutgutia’s flowery background, this is quite a diversification for FNP. Food is my second passion and I see a great business proposition in it, he says.
Soon, FNP is adding a professional hosts/hostesses academy. The academy will train and engage young people as hosts and hostesses in scores of events that are organised around the country throughout the year. I promise these youngsters better remuneration than those of airhostesses, he declares.
And train them without any cost. These two new businesses along with core flower retail business will help FNP touch Rs 500 crore in revenues by 2010 end, says Vikaas. The common thread in all these ventures is that they are all dominated by a huge unorganised sector. My experience with people and ideas from them has led me to believe that one can bring an order in such unorganised industries. All one has to do is to identify need gaps, he says.
Vikaas grew up in a small house surrounded by 2-acre chrysanthemum farm in Vidyasagar, a small township on the Bihar-West Bengal border. He used to see his grandfather often travel to supply flowers to New Market retailers in Kolkata. Vidyasagar had the right climatic conditions for floriculture saw nothing in a big way.
Dealing with flower shops in Kolkata was difficult and catering to them from a far off place threw up pricing and quality issues . Gutgutia family was forced to set up it’s own retail outlet in Kolkata in the late 1980s. Things remained that way till Vikaas took charge.
He set up his first fresh flower retail outlet in Delhi in 1994, Ferns ‘N’ Petals. Popular perception suggested that a florist shop can’t be run without personal supervision. That meant you couldn’t have more than one shop, he says. Vikaas’ determination to prove the perception wrong kept him going. With the inauguration of the second outlet in 1995, the ordeal to get the model right began.
TIMES NEWS NETWORK (FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 2007)
