Chandubhai Virani has built an empire worth crores starting from scratch. His journey to building this successful business is quite inspiring. His road to success has been quite rocky from doing odd jobs to finally starting his own venture, he met with a lot of obstacles.
Born into a family of farmers in Gujarat. He grew up under a lot of financial struggles. At the age of 15, Chandubhai and his family moved to Dhundoraji, and lived off his father’s savings. Chandubhai along with his two brothers were entrusted with Rs 20,000 and they used that to start a business of agricultural products and farm equipment Rajkot, but unfortunately that business collapsed within two years, pushing the family into deeper financial troubles.
Chandubhai took up odd jobs to support his family, he worked at a canteen in Astron Cinema and repaired torn seats, worked for sticking company posters. To escape the Financial burden, the family moved out of their rented home for a brief time. However, there was a ray of hope when they Chandubhai and his brothers were able to secure a contract of Rs 1,000 per month from their work in the canteen at Astron
Chandubhai took a risk by venturing into business again after analyzing the demand for wafers as snacks at the cinema theatre, and this changed the course of his life. He built up a temporary shade in his courtyard and started experimenting with chips with a meagre investment of Rs 10,000.
His homemade chips received an outpouring of support from both inside and outside the theatre. Encouraged by this achievement, Chandubhai opened Gujarat’s biggest potato wafer factory in 1989 at Aji GIDC in Rajkot, mainly supported by small earnings and a bank loan of about Rs 50 lakh.
Chandubhai and his brothers established Balaji Wafers Private Ltd. in 1992. Initially it began with four facilities spread out across the nation and a daily production capacity of 6.5 million kg of potatoes and 10 million kg of namkeen, Balaji Wafers prospered over the years.
Today, Balaji Wafers employs 5,000 individuals, with an impressive 50 percent of the workforce comprising women. Their manufacturing units in Rajkot and Valsad have grown immensely with a combined capacity produce 3,400 kg of chips per hour. The plant in Valsad is one of the biggest in Asia as per Forbes report. The brand has made remarkable growth and it only keeps expanding.
