Lijjat Papad : The Coolest Startup Of India

 Hey, would you come with me to the 1950s' India? Think about that time for once, The country is made independent recently, and there are very few opportunities, Poverty is there in the country, And the women's condition was even worse, They have to be at home only, Most of them were not educated, Hence, starting a startup was a big deal for anybody at that time, And if all of them are women, and they talk about starting a startup, then people would have laughed, But during such times in the 1950s, seven women came together, They met each other on the house's roof, Contributed 80 rupees and started making 'Papads' And this startup was profitable from the first day, And the name of this startup was Lijjat Papad. 

Actually, these were Gujarati women and lijjat means tasty in Gujarati, And today, this business has become a company worth 16000 crores, Which even exports different things to other countries too, And to tell you what they did, I will tell you the story in a different way, I will tell you 5 things, Which are considered cool by big companies today, But these things were made cool by these women in the 1950s. And nobody even thought about this at that time in India. First, is Work from Home, People are nowadays working from home, due to covid, And it seems a new thing to us, and some people didn't even know about this, Work from home was made popular by Lijjat papad, They collected women together, And they told all of them to make papads in their homes, And submit it to them, Hence, Work from home was the part of core organizational structure of lijjat papad The second thing was Women Empowerment, People write long posts today on social media, That there must be women empowerment, But actually, these are all urban young people, who have access to the internet, And they talk about all this while sitting in their AC rooms.

But those women who are in different parts of the country, And they don't even know about their rights, In the 1950s, when it was so hard for women to go out and work, Making an organization for them, and starting a network of these women, Who can earn through their homes, Was true women empowerment, And this has now become a network of more than 40000 women, Who work for lijjat papad.

The third thing is ESOPs. This is a very cool term nowadays, If you look at startup twitter, then most people are talking about it, It stands for employee stock ownership program, In which the company gives some of its shares to its employees This means it makes you a small owner of the company, It means that if the company is growing, then it is the employees' profit too, That's why they don't have to be pressurized for work, but they work hard on their own, Because they will get profit too when the company will grow, And Lijjat papad started this model from day one, They called it the cooperative model And they said that the women who are connected with us are not our employees, But they are our owners, If the company will get profit, so they will also get profit, And they will get a loss if the company goes in loss, And if the company gets good profit, if one center does a very good job, or one home gave more papads, Then they used to give them a gold coin, Because the gold coin was required at that time in Marriages, So that's how they built their company, ESOP, which is considered cool today, by the startup twitter, This has been going on since the 1950s at lijjat papad.

The fourth thing was profitability, If you run behind money, then your company becomes money-driven, Then the employees also get here and there and they don't understand the motive of the company, Is it earning money, or it is value addition, Lijjat papad was profitable from day one, and is profitable today too, But earning profit was not their motive, They said that if they are making a network of 40000 women, Then we will make them so driven, That they will themselves take the company to such a place. 

 That they don't even have to think about if the profit was coming or not, And they kept their company profitable through this simple rule, And you will be shocked after hearing about the fifth thing, If you are connecting different women who have no experience of making papad, Then standardization is a difficult thing, Today, there are so many franchises of McDonald's everywhere, But the taste of every burger is the same everywhere, All the bun will be of the same size, and the aloo Tikki will always be the same cooked, And the layering will also be the same, And this thing standardization was so difficult to maintain in the 1950s with so many different women, So they found out a solution to this, They thought about the most special about the papad, It is its dough, Papad is made from this dough, Its taste represents the papad's taste, So they tried to keep a centralized format, From where women will come and collect their dough and take it to their home, These women went there, gave their previous day papads, and collect the dough, And they used to get their payment on the next window only, They don't use to get their payment after a week or a month. 

 They used to get instant payment, And they used to collect the dough for the next day from the other window, They also used to give them a rolling pad, So that the thickness and surface area of the papad would be standardized, And they also have kept random inspection points, That somebody will come randomly to you to see whether they work is going on correctly or not, How is the cleanliness, which oil is used etc, Hence they kept everything standardized, That's why their quality control was top-notch, From day one, And you must have listened to one thing if you live in north India Which is that there are 4 friends of the khichdi- Curd, papad, ghee, and pickle, Curd and ghee was mostly made in homes at that time, Pickle was also kept at home at that time, But making papad was a complicated process, You need proper sunlight for that, and you can make them in only some seasons, And 'Papad belana' is an idiom which tells that it is a very difficult task, And hence papad making was a difficult thing which was identified by these women, And started selling papads. 

 Today, they sell so many things, They supply their goods in India, and other countries too, And this all started from a unique Idea, This presents a very example of women Empowerment, You must have heard this story before too, but I tried to tell you this story differently, I hope you like this story of the coolest startup of India.