2) Rajni Bector is the founder and CEO of Mrs. Bector’s Cremica, a maker of biscuits and bread in India and a key supplier of McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King🍔
Rajni was born in Karachi, and had moved to Delhi with her family post partition
3) She married into a business family in Ludhiana while in college. Like most women then, most of her adult life was spent being a housewife and a doting mother💁♀️
However, when the kids left for school, she suddenly found a lot of free time on her hands
4) Out of boredom, she decided to take up her hobby of making ice cream
Rajni was a social person, gathering friends and family around her food for a nice time at home — now these gatherings doubled up as food tastings🥯
5) People loved her food so much that they started coming back to Rajni with catering orders for their functions!🤙
Rajni loved the new interest and purpose she had found
6) With plenty time on her hand, she decided to enroll in a formal baking class at the Punjab Agricultural University, studying the technicalities of baking🧁
Meanwhile, orders from catering wouldn’t stop.
The local-MLA even got her to cook food for a wedding with 2000 guests!
7) Rajni was fulfilling all orders from her home kitchen, which she had set up on a ₹300 budget.
She would end up selling below cost price, ruining tiny batches, and in the process incurring losses.
Commercializing the business was the only way it could work — if at all
9) 1980s India was a tumultuous time — Punjab was hit by violence
The Bector’s 100 year-old fertilizer business was destroyed. Economy of small towns like Ludhiana was ravaged
The Bector family decided it was time to team up and double up on what’s working — the food business.
10) The Bector’s opened their first ice cream retail joint next to Kwality’s — an instant hit in Ludhiana!!🍦
Using those profits they opened an operations facility in the town — finally moving out of the home kitchen.
The upstart became a legit company… 👏
11) Meanwhile, the family began taking an active role in the business, eyeing further expansion.
Cremica commissioned a biscuit plant in Ludhiana in 1991.
Big break came in 1995 — when McDonalds was expanding in India. Cremica became the sole supplier of buns and sauces🍅
12) By 2006, Cremica was cashing in ₹100 crores in revenues, with a 30% consistent growth rate📈
They were expanding across north-India, supplying to major chain restaurants
Dalal Street was taking notice and big bracket investors including Goldman invested in the business💸
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