Karan TannaFounder & CEO of Yellow Tie Hospitality Management LLP Published On: Thursday, July 14, 2016 Views 4796

"There is nothing like failure; it’s just one step towards success."

Learning through experiences & passion for food have always been a key elements in life for Karan Tanna, and his career journey clearly depicts this fact. Karan Tanna, a Bachelor in Automobile Engineering, started his professional life with major multinational corporates like General Motors and McKinsey & Company, serving as assistant manager & research analyst.

After acquiring a rich industrial experience, he decided to live his entrepreneurial dream and launched a series of businesses of food & hospitality industry at multiple locations. Drawing lessons & inspirations from his entrepreneurial ventures, he finally launched Yellow Tie Hospitality, LLP – a food and beverage franchising management company that design new restaurant concepts an grow them through franchising. After initial success since its launch in December 2015, Karan’s startup is set to achieve many new breakthroughs in coming years.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

Yellow Tie Hospitality Management LLP is a food and beverage franchise management company. We come up with various restaurant concepts and grow them through franchising, giving opportunity to entrepreneurs to start a business in food and beverage category. We are aiming for a portfolio with at least 10 brands in next 2 years.

The first brand that we have on board is Genuine Broaster Chicken (GBC). It’s an American brand that has technology based cooking at the core of its success. Their patent technology of pressure fryer chicken utilizes 50% lesser oil than usual open fried chicken. We are expanding to 40 stores in India by the end of 2016.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

Lots of young entrepreneurs look at opportunities to start a restaurant business, but owing to the lack of experience many fail. We want to use our experience and expertise of managing restaurants to give an easy to manage, efficient business and operation model in form of franchise to enable them to run their business successfully.

Besides, we are very passionate about food and restaurant business so such a business model gives us opportunity to continuously innovate and come up with interesting scalable concepts.

What is your life mantra?

My life mantra is to focus upon strengths and to polish them rather than cribbing about our weaknesses. When one achieves excellence, success has no other option but to follow you.

What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?

I often have to deal with investors, and being young is challenging at times for them to believe in my pitch. Though, I have started believing that there’s nothing like challenges; it is a part of business. This helps me to overcome problems at the earliest.

How did you overcome those challenges?

I only pitch where I have conviction. I first have answers and reasons to whatever I speak. This helps me in boosting my confidence. I aim at presenting the quick wins and share references which build rightful trust.

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

We are being funded from internal accruals for launch and growth of brand across India. However, since we are a franchisee company, we always have to look for investments. We have been able to sign off 15 investors so far who have invested from Rs. 40 lakhs to Rs. 2 crores each, for opening stores at various locations in India.

How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?

We believe that it’s imperative to give employees independence so that they get ownership and satisfaction in what they are doing. Give them values and strong roots to keep them grounded.

There is no thumb rule to retain employees, but I believe if the organization is transparent, employees would want to be associated with such a company.

According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?

Passion (enables patience)
Hard Work and
Never Say Die attitude

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?

We have an in-house (office) application for managing our daily reports, ordering raw materials, tracking projects and other operational activities. I think that technology must be customized to one’s use and if used efficiently, it can be on huge value. Beside the customized app that we have built for our operations, I only use apps for news and ordering food.

Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.

A habit that makes me more productive is planning efficient delegation and grooming my team to share part of my business responsibility. I believe in making my team efficient which in return, increases my efficiency.

Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.

I’m a workaholic individual; I would like to start taking a weekly off which might help me to be more efficient. But, it’s too farfetched.

Answer in less than 50 words

One tip to success:

There is nothing like failure; it’s just one step towards success.

One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:

To focus on multiple things & be bogged down by your weaknesses is one mistake every individual must avoid. It is rather very important to focus upon strengths and find your passion.

One most important lesson that you have learnt till now:

In a quest to think long term, one always ignores the short term benefits/ returns. I realized it is important to also focus on short term healthy returns because they enable you to sustain with the same passion and efficiency to achieve bigger and better stuffs.

What are your plans for next 3 years?

I want to partner with 500 entrepreneurs, which means we should have 500 plus outlets with minimum 10 brands. I want to keep learning from all these entrepreneurs and add value to my life.

If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?

I would do the same thing, but start earlier