From quitting his first job at Infosys after receiving a promotion to choosing an offbeat business and giving it an eyebrow-raising quirky name, Samrat Reddy, founder of Drunken Monkey, a fast-growing Indian smoothie chain, has time and again proved that he is a maverick entrepreneur. At a time when coffee and tea chains were mushrooming around the country, Samrat decided to go for a smoothie chain - though he drew inspiration to set up the business from Starbucks, an international coffee house.
Starting with a single outlet in Hyderabad in 2016, Drunken Monkey with its tantalizing tagline, Naturally High, has grown exponentially in the last five years embracing the franchise model. Samrat, 36, is not taking it easy yet and wants to more than double his outlets in the next 10 months. “I want to touch 250 outlets in the next 10 months and in the next three years I plan to expand to other countries too,” he says.
Samrat’s defining moment can be traced back to the time when he decided to quit his job at Infosys, where he had worked for more than a year and drew a salary of Rs 1.5 lakh. When he decided to quit his job, he had been posted in Melbourne, Australia, for about a year and had just received a promotion and offer for a further four-year stay in Australia from the company. “I quit because I knew if I didn’t do it then, I would never ever be able to move out,” Samrat laughs, explaining his decision that may have been least expected from someone who had graduated from college just two years earlier.
“When I started working, I realized that most toppers were hardworking, but weren’t street smart and didn’t have the social skills,” observes the man, who today has more than 1,000 people working in his franchised outlets. And what was their response when he decided to quit his high-paying job at Infosys?
While his parents worked in Hyderabad, Samrat spent most of his childhood at his aunt’s house in Chennai, where he grew up with several cousins, and this environment shaped his personality to a great extent. “I had a fun childhood as growing up in a large family helped me understand people better, and the fact that everybody is different,” says Samrat, reflecting on his growing up years in Chennai.
He graduated in electronics and instrumentation from SRM College, Chennai, in 2006 and joined as a Test Environment Engineer at Infosys where he worked for more than a year before quitting the job and enrolling for an MBA in the UK. Between 2010 and 2015, while his friend and business partner handled Hestia, Samrat took up several other assignments.
Starting with a single outlet in Hyderabad in 2016, Drunken Monkey with its tantalizing tagline, Naturally High, has grown exponentially in the last five years embracing the franchise model. Samrat, 36, is not taking it easy yet and wants to more than double his outlets in the next 10 months. “I want to touch 250 outlets in the next 10 months and in the next three years I plan to expand to other countries too,” he says.
“When I started working, I realized that most toppers were hardworking, but weren’t street smart and didn’t have the social skills,” observes the man, who today has more than 1,000 people working in his franchised outlets. And what was their response when he decided to quit his high-paying job at Infosys?
While his parents worked in Hyderabad, Samrat spent most of his childhood at his aunt’s house in Chennai, where he grew up with several cousins, and this environment shaped his personality to a great extent. “I had a fun childhood as growing up in a large family helped me understand people better, and the fact that everybody is different,” says Samrat, reflecting on his growing up years in Chennai.
He graduated in electronics and instrumentation from SRM College, Chennai, in 2006 and joined as a Test Environment Engineer at Infosys where he worked for more than a year before quitting the job and enrolling for an MBA in the UK. Between 2010 and 2015, while his friend and business partner handled Hestia, Samrat took up several other assignments.
“In 2016 we opened the first outlet of Drunken Monkey at Hyderabad in a 700 sq ft space with five employees and 200 types of smoothies. Our smoothies are 100% natural and contain no preservatives,” says Samrat. They can be (filling) like a meal,” says Samrat, who married only two years ago.
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