S1E2: Millionaire Mondays - Biraja Rout, Biggies Burger

Millionaire Mondays by Backstage with Millionaires

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There’s an Indian burger startup that is stealing market share from Burger King and McDonald’s. Its founder hadn’t tasted a burger before 2010. Now he’s running a ₹100 crore ARR burger chain with 100+ locations. This is the story of Biggies Burger:

Biraja Rout is from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. He comes from a regular working-class family. In 2010 he got a job at Infosys, and briefly shifted to Mysuru for training: it was here that he tried his first burger. The experience had an unusually profound impact on him.

After shifting to Bengaluru to work at Infosys’ campus in Electronic City, Biraja borrowed ₹1.5 lakh from a friend and purchased a fabricated 5 sq. ft. booth. This was the first Biggies Burger location. He would man the booth after office hours and on weekends.

Biraja was passionate about burgers but he had no business experience. From 2011 until 2015 he rarely had more than ₹1,000 in his bank account, and his motorcycle would often run out of petrol while he drove to Namdhari's to buy expensive, fresh lettuce for his burgers.

Biggies Burger’s second kiosk was set up in Bhubaneswar in 2012. Biraja would transport ingredients from Bengaluru via the Prasanthi Express train’s AC chambers, as an affordable alternative to expensive cold chain logistics. He lost money on every Bhubaneswar burger sold.

Biggies Burger became extremely popular in Bhubaneswar - it was essentially the only burger joint in a 200 kilometre radius. This caught the attention of Sandeep Satpathy, who approached Biraja about setting up a franchised location in Raipur in 2013.

Raipur is a largely vegetarian city, and at this time the brand name was Biggies Burger ‘n’ More. One of their secondary product lines were hot dogs, which were made of chicken meat. These meat products were underperforming in Raipur, and so Biraja decided to create a veg option.

However, due to a lack of quality veg hot dog products in the Indian market, Biraja wasn’t impressed and decided to import hot dogs instead, sourcing them from Malaysia. These hot dogs equated to a loss of ₹860 per kilo. Biraja sustained this loss for several years.

By 2016, the business was still in a financially precarious position, owing between ₹18-20 lakh to various vendors. During this time, on any given day, Biggies Burger was ₹10,000 away from collapse, and when Biraja got married in 2016, he couldn’t afford to buy a blazer.

Biraja’s fortunes finally turned when a master territory franchise was established and four franchisees paid their fees in rapid succession. Suddenly, Biraja and Biggies were out of debt. By the end of 2016, Biggies had 18 locations.

In 2016, Sandeep Satpathy joined Biggies burger as a co-founder, along with Abilash Bellur, who had purchased the Electronic City location in 2013 as a franchisee. Abilash Bellur took on operations, Sandeep spearheaded business development, and Biraja focused on R&D.

From 2016 onwards, the business was able to achieve financial stability. Biggies’ parent company, Beamer Food and Beverages, also launched a new subsidiary brand, Bigguy’s Wingery, to compete with KFC in the chicken QSR space.

Today, Biggies has 124 locations, and is doing annualised revenue of ₹100 crore.