The Village Boy who Decided to Bake in India
Srinivasa Iyengar, or
Sheenappa to friends and relatives, comes from a remote village in Hassan
district in Karnataka.When he was 12, his father bundled him off to an Iyengar
bakery, run by a relative, in Shivamogga town in the neighbouring district, as
he wasn't too inclined to study. The Iyengar bakeries, like the Udupi hotels,
are ubiquitous in Karnataka and many parts of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and
Maharashtra. It's a riddle how the conservative and pure-vegetarian Iyengars
took to baking, a western cuisine and a foreign vocation, and turned into
entrepreneurs. There are thousands of these Iyengar bakeries in Bengaluru city
alone, doing brisk business.
The Iyengar bakery is
seemingly like a franchise without being a franchise. They all have the same
name, Iyengar Bakery, often with a prefix -Hassan Iyengar Bakery or Lakshmi
Janardhana Iyengar Bakery, named after the family deity. The “bakery Iyengars“,
as they are referred to, is a subsect of Iyengars. They are owners of these
bakeries and hail from about 12-15 remote villages in Hassan.
Nowadays, many
entrepreneurs from other communities also sport the “Iyengar“ name for their
bakery, as it has brand value -like the “Indian restau rants“ in London and
other European cities, which are largely run by Bangladeshis.
These bakeries have a
simple, tested format. The glass sales counters, with small frontage of 10 to
20 feet, face the pavements.Customers can easily step into the bakery and shop
for cakes and breads. The wall behind is adorned with a showcase that holds
many bakery products and speciality savouries of the Iyengars like murukku and
kodabale. The ovens, cake mixers and grinders etc are crammed into an equal
area at the back of the shop. The small startup bakeries are usually run by the
owner with one helper and with the wife or a relative pitching in to manage the
sales counter and also as an additional fillin during rush hours. After
learning the tricks of the trade, and acquiring the skills and confidence, at
18, Sheenappa left Shivamogga, cobbled togeth er `3,000 from relatives and
mustered enough courage to migrate to Bengaluru and set up a tiny bakery in
Coles Park, predomi nantly a Christian residential area. Daily sales totted up
to `150 in the first few months. That was in 1980. It was enough for Sheenappa
to find a roof over his head and keep his body and soul together.
Within a couple of years,
powered by hard work and a gift of the gab, Sheenappa was generating enough
surplus cash to open a second bakery, this one in an upmarket area not too far
from the first one. This one proved to be a runaway success. Sheenappa had
arrived and, with the business reaching a suitable scale and stability, he
figured now was the time to help youth like him from the Iyengar villages who
were pouring into Bengaluru, unable to live off agriculture in come. Bank loans
without sound collateral didn't come easy. It was an opportunity, too, for
Sheenappa who started a `chit fund' of sorts for the bak ery community,
providing seed capital at higher interest rates than banks for small entrepre
neurs looking for quick startup capital. Unorganised lending is, of course, a
risky business and Sheenappa had his setbacks and once was almost down and out.
He had to re build the bakery business from scratch, bought new sites as well
as built a few small commercial complexes and a service apart ment. Soon he was
sporting a Rado watch , a thick gold chain (the trademark of successful Iyengar
bakers) and had bought an Audi SUV.
His two children have gone
on to become a software engineer and a doctor.
ETM20MAR16
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