SRI SRI UNIVERSITY

The smell of filter coffee with the sight of steaming hot Dosa is something no Indian can resist. While others are serving the society outside, Shobhita and Kishan, MBA 2^nd Year students decided to serve the people within SSU. Vindara Cafe has become the new social hangout for the faculty, staff and students of the University. These students have taken up the challenge of creating a Dosa plaza with limited resources.

“Vindara as a start up initiative was born during the first year of our MBA, when myself Chimmininan Kishan and my classmate Sobhitha Indrakanti sat together to think of something that could Indianize the global food market, specifically with South Indian food.

Our dream project was to spread the world with our food trucks that sells fresh and authentic South Indian food. To set our project in motion we brought in together a couple of friends from class and set out to do market research in the field. We spent over an entire semester doing research on the industry and the market and also participated in B-Plan competitions. On our way, we achieved many awards for our project.

After gathering lots of market research and suggestions and opinions from many experienced people, we finally decided to set our plan into test. Knowing that our university would be the perfect place for doing a pilot project, we set our goal to set up a cafe in campus.

To achieve this we met with university authorities, staffs to understand the process of getting things done on the campus. In this process, we obtained licenses, met with Government officials and gained a better understanding of policies and structure.

Although we had to face a lot of difficulties in obtaining legal documents, it was hugely supported by our university to ease out the efforts. Once done with the permissions, our project was set into motion, all equipment was purchased and people were recruited from within the campus and off campus as well.

The cafe was inaugurated on the 30th of October, on the auspicious day of Dashami. We recruited 2 students, Sreeram Kunapuli and Pravallika Seshabhattar who are doing BBA at SSU, who are currently taking care of some of the major cafe processes, which is giving them a deeper understanding of business processes in the real world. Our project has been backed by several friends who have helped with the investments and many more.

Vindara cafe has been successfully running for the last one month. Managing our studies with the business has been a challenge what we had to endure, but the amount of learning we get from it is unmatched.”