Earn Millions Through Franchising

Rediff News:

Rajat Mathur, 36, had always wanted to strike out on his own. So, when he left the i-flex Solutions office in Mumbai as its senior banking analyst for the last time on April 30, 2006, he did not regret it. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay and Indian Institute of Management - Lucknow, he had worked at Times Bank and ICICI Bank before i-flex.

You would walk into Orbit Mall on the Malad-Goregaon Road in Mumbai to the aroma of freshly baked cookies. The bouquet will lead you past the Good Earth store on your left, and round the corner to the Cookie Man shop.

And there, presiding over chocolate and honey-almond cookies, you would meet Mathur again. Counting the cash, checking the cookies, and serving them straight out of the oven at the back to the crowds thronging the counter. ‘I always wanted to do something on my own as I think that’s where the real fun is. You can never get that in a 9-to-5 job.’ Mathur’s entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well.

While Mathur cut loose, a lot of others wanting to do so have not. With responsibilities and dependents, they don’t dare to leave the warmth of a regular income and plunge into the financial turbulence a new business could bring. But today, the ‘fresher’ can go in with the safety tube of franchising. That’s what he did.

T K S Kumar, a franchisee of Whirlpool Service Centre in Chennai for a decade now, says: ‘I wanted to realise my long-cherished dream of becoming an employment giver from an employment seeker.’ But P Ramarao, president, Australian Foods, which owns Cookie Man, warns: ‘It’s not for people who aren’t passionate.’