Don’t let Bickychand Khangjrakpam’s quiet demeanour fool you. This is a man who most likely knows more about ‘business agility’ and ‘customer behaviour’ than your favourite management school professor. His knowledge comes not from textbooks and case studies but from actually having had his ear to the ground. Or shall we say – the shop floor?
Bickychand, along with Kenedy Oinam, is the co-founder of Manipur’s first technology-driven food delivery service – FoodWifi. Ask him why, of all the things, he thought of a food-tech business and he will tell you of how an ‘employee mindset’ just isn’t his cup of tea and most important of all, that Manipur has been impatient for something like this.
Bickychand’s life lessons started when he was just nine years old. That’s when his father, a government employee, ran into financial trouble and decided to start a CD and cassette parlour. Bickychand, who says he was a timid child, figured it would be a good place to hang out after school. He would sit in a quiet corner of the shop and watch as his father listened to customer requests, gave suggestions on what they should record, showed infinite patience if there was a difficult situation and then carefully cut CDs as he went about fulfilling all of the day’s orders. And when, late evening, it was time to down the shutters, Bickychand would feel a sense of accomplishment as his father went through the receipts and counted the money that would put food on the table and pay for his school. “I think that from a very young age I started liking all those things that go into running a business,” he says. Bickychand understood early on how crucial it was to listen - to customers and to what the market was saying, because all that would finally add up to helping him develop an instinct for what would make a successful business. Customers are what make or break a business. If you don’t listen to them, guide them and finally satisfy their needs, your business is unlikely to take off, says Bickychand who describes himself as a ‘good listener’. But there’s another aspect to this trained electronic and communications engineer that comes through when he opens up to The NorthEast Stories – he has no fear of the unknown. “Repetitive work bores me. I need to keep looking for new things to do,” he says.
And so, even though he completed his B-Tech and worked for a while as a service engineer, Bickychand was itching to do something creative. He meandered through life looking for that one thing that would inspire him. Then miraculously, a few things started falling in place. Bickychand decided he would enrol for an MBA, where he was introduced to a course in entrepreneurship development, a subject he found fascinating. About that time, he met Kenedy, who, like him was bored and restless. A conversation they struck up when Kenedy accompanied a friend to his home, carried on for many animated months at coffee shops as they exchanged ideas and drew up plans about the kind of business that would be soul-satisfying. Bickychand would talk about what he’d learnt from his experience at his father’s shop and from reading about inspiring entrepreneurs and their journey, and Kenedy would speak of his learnings from the restaurant he was working at. And as they spoke over numerous cups of coffee, the two 20-plus realized an efficient food delivery system was perhaps something Manipur was waiting for. And it was. From an average of 20 delivery orders a day at the start, Foodwifi now does close to an average of about 500 orders daily. The business started with 40,000 seed money and today, a turnover of 5-6 crore is a dream come true. He very consciously, employs women, busting taboos around them working out of home, making it acceptable for them to be seen whizzing about Imphal and surrounding areas delivering food. No wonder then that within just a year of its inception in 2017, Foodwifi was recognized by the government as one of the top 29 start-ups in the state.
“It helps that we have the energy of youth,” Bickychand tells The NorthEast Stories. But it isn’t just energy. It is courage – the courage to take risks, to break away from the orthodox. It is a kind of courage that the millennials seem to have in abundance. It is the courage to never give up.
How did you land up studying engineering? Did you enjoy the course?
I thought it was cool. My father worked in an organisation where there were many engineers and because of that, he wanted me to become an engineer. As a child, I found myself saying to whoever asked that “I want to become an engineer”. That’s how I landed up in an engineering college, studying for a degree in Electronics & Commination Engineering. I didn’t understand anything I was studying there. But I never failed in any subject. Studying there was more like studying how to deal with life. So yes, I enjoyed my time over there.
When did you realise you did not want to be an engineer?
Soon after completing B.Tech, I found a job as Service Engineer in a company. In the beginning, I enjoyed the work very much, but after just five months, I started getting bored; there wasn’t anything new left for me to learn. So I started looking for other work but realised I did not want to work in a company that was run by someone else. I wanted to start a company of my own. That’s when I decided to study MBA.
Where did the idea of Foodwifi come about and simmered in your mind?
During my 1st semester in MBA, I found a very interesting subject called “Entrepreneurship Development”. That led me to study that topic further. I started looking for people who were already in that field. I collected stories of around 40 entrepreneurs, their work and their journey. It motivated me so much that I wasn’t able to concentrate in class and hoping for an idea.
At that time one of my school friends visited my home with Kenedy. We discovered we were interested in similar things. Kenedy was in the process of starting a clothes franchise business. He had forced his father to take voluntary retirement from his government job thinking he could use his pension benefits to start the business. But that money wasn’t enough. So he had to join a restaurant to save some money and gain experience.
By December 2016 we had started hanging out together every day. As soon as I would come back from university he will come to my place and we used to go to a nearby coffee shop to talk about our ideas very late into the night. One day we heard of a start-up workshop that we wanted to participate in it. But to do so we had to go along with a business idea. We racked our brains and finally came up with the idea of a food delivery service of which Kenedy had experience from his work in the restaurant. Many customers would call the restaurant asking for food to be delivered but there were no delivery services. So we did a survey. We visited around 35 restaurants and discovered a big gap in the market. We saw an opportunity and decided to start Foodwifi.
When did you start the company?
The delivery was launched on June 10, 2017. It was during my three-month internship break. The company was incorporated as Wigistic Ventures Private Limited with Kenedy and me as its two directors in June 2018, just after we were selected by the Government of Manipur as among the top 29 start-ups.
What is the role technology in your business?
Foodwifi is a food-tech business: a service provider driven by technologies. In this fast-moving age of the internet and technologies, we have to equip the company with the best technology available in the market. I would say much of our business is operated by technology.
Women have a significant role in the economic activity of Manipur -- you engage women for delivery too?
Yes, a few women have started joining Foodwifi after they learnt how much a delivery partner can earn. In our society, it was considered a taboo type for girls and women to do delivery work as the work includes going door to door to deliver food. But there was a need to change this orthodox thinking. After two to three years, women started joining delivery services as food delivery is also a good income-earning job.
What were your initial challenges?
After visiting more than 25 restaurants, only three restaurants agreed to be part of our food delivery. Explaining the idea and convincing restaurants was quite challenging because the idea was very new at that time. After onboarding the three restaurants, we started taking orders on phone calls from friends and family.
We started getting 10 to 20 orders in the initial stages. We had to give time for this newborn idea to take hold. I had to attend class during the day, Kenedy had to manage the business alone with the one staff member we hired. I was restless in class as I would check the orders that were trickling in from my phone. I started bunking classes regularly. My attendance was very poor.
Soon the orders started increasing. We had to hire more delivery boys, but since the job was very new, getting staff was very tough. We advertised in local newspapers, asked friends and colleagues if they had family members or friends who wanted to join. We got very few responses.
Now, how many deliveries do you get in a day on average?
Currently, we are on a run of 400 – 500 orders a day on average.
Was it difficult to convince people to get their food delivered?
I think we are lucky that we were young at that time. We were full of energy and wherever we went to meet people, whether customers or restaurants, we had to deal with older people only. Dealing with older people teaches us a lot. We presented Foodwifi to the public in a way that people using our services would understand that they were also helping Manipur’s youth in changing society for the better.
Have you ever sought to get government aid?
Yes, in 2018, we have participated in Start-Up Manipur under the Prime Minister’s Start-Up India Scheme. We got selected and received 20 lakhs as a loan with a subsidy.
You are soon going to have competition— how do you feel?
Very excited. Last year we experienced the entry of Swiggy. The market grew bigger and the size of our market share increase by quite a good number. We believe we grow more as we meet big brands like Swiggy.
Where all are you present and how are your expansion plans going?
Currently, we are operating in the greater Imphal area, Churachandpur, and Moirang. We are planning to expand to Thoubal and few other districts of Manipur in the coming months.
