Patricia Narayan the woman who earned 50 paise a day now is a woman who has inspired many to never give up
Patricia Thomas married Narayan at the mere age of 17. More so, she was ousted from her family home as her parents were against this inter-religion marriage. To top it all, the love of her life who she left everything for, turned into a drug addict soon and she was left with no money and four hungry mouths to feed. However, she wasn’t the one to give up and she decided to start over. Thus, she set up a mobile cart on Marina beach and with help from two specially-abled people, she started selling snacks, coffee, tea and juice. She claims that Marina was her business school as it taught her everything there was to learn about running a business.
Over the next years, she started running canteens for offices in Chennai and soon in 1998, became the director of Nelson Manckam road restaurant. However, it wasn’t the end of grief for Patricia. In the year 2002, Narayan, passed away and after some days, her daughter and son-in-law lost their lives in a car accident too. These events seemed to have devastated Patricia but she decided to hold on to her determined spirit and move on.
Patricia and her son soon set up their first restaurant called “Sandeepha” which was named after her late daughter. Since then, she has gone on to devote all her time to building and nurturing her restaurant and making it bigger and more popular than ever.
Her struggles to make odds meet were difficult but the courage and determination she showed was definitely extraordinary. In 2010, her struggles and business sense was appreciated and she won the ‘FICCI Woman Entrepreneur of the Year’ and soon became an inspiration to all women across the country.
“I started my business with just two people. Now, there are 200 people working for me in my restaurants. My lifestyle has changed too. From travelling in a cycle rickshaw, I moved to auto rickshaws and now I have my own car. From a mere 50 paise a day, my revenue has gone up to Rs 2 lakh a day.” -Patricia Narayan
At just 24, he has made his name in the start-up world and comes across as a charismatic young entrepreneur.
More than talent, skills or resources, it is the willingness to keep pushing your limits which brings you face to face with success. This incredible story is about a 24-year-old who everyone thought was a good for nothing chap but the very same people today can’t stop obsessing over his success. His unconventional ideas have made him the CEO of a company which has been valued at Rs 11 crore despite a very short span of operation.
Meet charismatic Gaurav Rana who grew up in a tiny, nondescript village named Sonf in Haryana. The wealth of his father had exhausted by the time he was five years old and all that was left for him was daily struggle with poverty. His father had become an alcoholic and was suffering from mental trauma. Whatever little money came their way was from his grandfather who ran a grocery store. They managed to buy food but couldn’t afford LPG to cook it so Gaurav and his elder sister spent all day collecting wood and cow dung in and around the village. The kids would make cow dung cakes and pass them on to their mother who would then cook some food for them.
To divert his attention from the painful life Gaurav started painting. Well-off children came asking him to draw for them and would in-turn give him Rs 20. While he was in STD 8 he started going to a nearby salon and learnt the art of haircut and shaving. The owner let him handle a few customers everyday and give him some commission for his help. The situation at home was still as grim as ever and the only way out seemed to be in education. In STD 10 Gaurav scored 96.9% and took admission in a deemed university in Agra where his grades dropped consistently and he couldn’t even touch 60% by the time he passed out.
“I couldn’t appear for placement interviews because I scored abysmal 58%. I pleaded with my teachers and got a chance to appear in one interview”. His low grades fetched him just one chance but he cracked it. He got a job with Eicher Motors for a monthly salary of Rs 15,000. But this good news was overshadowed by problems at home. His parents were burdened under a sum of Rs 2 lakh that they had borrowed from friends and relatives who wanted their money back.
“I had no money to go to Indore and join Eicher. There was no question of borrowing money as all our relatives had turned hostile. I was heartbroken to see how people change and decided to end our financial struggles somehow”, Gaurav recollects.
A friend’s mother helped him and he reached Eicher, Indore. He did night shifts there and worked as a dance teacher and event organizer in the day time. Gradually, he paid off all the credits his family has taken but had also realized that he couldn’t do job all his life. He was giving more and more time for organizing events which reflected poorly at his performance in his company.
“People had tagged me useless, for them I was good for nothing”, he says.
However, the perception of people changed when he did an event with FTV and the news splashed all over the newspapers. To celebrate his success he went back to him home in Haryana where his mother worked as a local beautician. She had to attend a client that day and the person was coming in every few hours to remind her of the task. Gaurav saw a gap here and thought he could fill this up with technology.
He came back to Eicher and couldn’t stop thinking about his idea. At the company’s annual party he got to know that the VP’s wife has 25 years of experience in IT. Despite his friends warnings, he boldly approached the woman and pitched her the idea and asked if she would collaborate on this. To his utter surprise she agreed and became the initial investor for Calipso, a company that delivers beauty services wherever the customer is.
The idea was unique and has become a major hit in Indore. Calipso has tied up with OYO rooms and several beauty salons to reach out to their customers. The latest trend that Gaurav has introduced in the industry is setting up stalls at weddings. “Nobody even thought of doing this even when there was a clear need for it. Ladies now chat away while getting a pedicure at weddings while men get a touch-up down after sweating it out on the dance floor,” Gaurav says in his thick Hariyanvi accented Hindi.
On being asked about competing against other doorstep beauty servicing giants he says, “I don’t think there is any competition because no matter how much funded they are they can never take away my guts from me.”
Currently, Calipso is operating in Indore, Bhopal and Ujjain making its way to expand in metros next.
Today, Gaurav employs more than 25 people and Calipso is valued at over Rs 11 crore. At just 24, he has made his name in the start-up world and comes across as a charismatic young entrepreneur.
“My relatives who had stopped speaking with us are now cordial again. One should always remember that times keep changing and hardwork pays off, every single time”, he said.
Internationally acclaimed Bollywood director Anurag Kashyap talks about his journey into films.
Internationally acclaimed Bollywood director Anurag Kashyap talks about his journey into films. When he entered the industry, he had neither connections nor money. He was an anonymous boy in his 20s in a cut-throat environment, with an unconventional view on films. The only way he could survive was to adapt. He was forced to look for new pathways, and today he is credited with breakthroughs in film making, casting, marketing, and distribution. Movies like Gangs Of Wasseypur, DevD, Black Friday, Bombay Velvet, Gulaal, and Ugly have been made by this now stalwart of Bollywood movies in India.
It was only the determination and courage of this 16-year-old boy which has today given him a larger than life image.
This story fails every logic and is stranger than fiction. It was only the determination and courage of this 16-year-old boy which has today given him a larger than life image.
This clueless, small-towner boy listened to his friends when they told him that only Mumbai can change his fate. He did not have a single penny in hand and had to sleep empty stomach at railway station in Mumbai. But this was still easier for him than to fight back the pain of consecutive deaths of his elder brother and father.
The boy hails from Durgapur in West Bengal. His father was an army-man who suffered bullet wounds in the 1971 war and was left paralyzed. The only breadwinner was his elder brother who died because they had no money to cure his illness. His father couldn’t absorb this shock and died three months later. Now his mother was the only emotional support he had but she was also a responsibility.
In May 1989, the 16-year-old boy sleeping at Dadar Railway Station had nothing except sheer determination and a rosy future which he wasn’t aware of then. Words of his friends proved true when got a Rs 15 job and a place to sleep in a room in occupied by 20 other men. The room was so small that occupants couldn’t move even while sleeping.
The boy, Sudip Dutta, would happily walk 40 km every day from his Meera Road home to factory in Jogeshwari and back because he could save some money to send to his mother. There were four siblings to be fed.
Two years later, the factory where he worked made losses and the owners decided to shut it down. But his company’s death proved to be game-changer for him. He mustered all his courage and decided to buy the loss-making firm. He went ahead and used his entire savings and even borrowed money from friends to raise Rs 16,000 to buy the unit.
The 19-year-old Sudip, who could not even feed himself properly, had taken responsibility of running seven families of labours who worked in his company. The sum of Rs 16,000 was very less for the unit but he convinced the owners that he would share the profits of the unit for the coming two years. They agreed and he became owner of the unit where till yesterday he was a labour.
It was a tragic time for the aluminum packaging industry. Only a few large corporations like Jindal Aluminum could make profits backed by their robust financial strength.
Sudip realized the need for innovation and came up with a whole new product range which was much better than others. However, competing with giants like Jindal wasn’t an easy task. He pitched his products relentlessly to large companies and made his unit survive by delivering orders from small companies.
He would wait for hours to meet business heads but never gave up. His efforts and communication skills started showing results when he received small orders from FMCG and pharma giants like Sun Pharma, Cipla, Nestle and others.
Though Sudip had tasted initial success, he wasn’t aware of larger challenge to come his way. He had created a new product area which was now being targeted by other companies.
A business group backed by business tycoon Anil Agarwal had bought India Foils which was defunct company just to venture into packaging area. Agarwal and his Vedanta group are one of world’s largest companies. It was a mammoth and impossible looking task to even survive in the business area where Vedanta existed.
Unaffected by giant Vedanta’s presence in the industry, Sudip continued his research and development for improving his product range and maintained strong bonds with his customers. Finally, Vedanta had to surrender before Sudip’s determination and offered to sell India Foils to Sudip. The deal marked Vedanta’s permanent exit from the industry.
He started targeting pharmaceutical companies for supplying packaging material and also invested in a sick unit which made aluminum foils. There was no looking back from now on. He became a distributor for Indian Aluminium Co. Ltd and within two years from 1998 and 2000, he set up 20 units!
After this Sudip’s company took giant leaps and and made a distinct identity in the market. His company today is listed both with the Bombay and National Stock Exchange and is a leading supplier of primary packaging materials in India. His achievements have given Sudip title of Narayan Murthy of packaging industry.
The heavyweight names like Cipla, Nestle and Sun Pharma are his clients now and the company is valued at over Rs 1,600.79 crore!
He lives in posh locality of Andheri where several actors live and sends his children to a school in Singapore! He works from his posh, multi-storied office in Kandivili. Today, his cabin is larger than that dingy room where he lived along with 20 more men.
The man who walked for several kilometers everyday today owns luxury cars like BMW and Mercedes. Even after reveling in crores of rupees, he is humble and connected to his roots. Workers in his factory lovingly address him as Dada (elder brother) because they all have seen him struggle and reach the top.
Sudip says, “Adversity always makes a man more determined and I was determined to succeed. So I kept working at it.” His life’s story is extraordinarily inspiring and tells us the worth of courage and dreaming big.
Struggle teaches a lot of lessons and Sudip realizes that it is now his turn to give back to the society. He has set up a foundation which encourages young entrepreneurs and start-ups, especially those who come from a weak economic background.
Born into a terribly poor family, the man had tasted hardship of financial crunch very closely since he was very young.
Born into a terribly poor family, the man had tasted hardship of financial crunch very closely since he was very young. He was born in a remote village with no road connectivity, not even a bus stop. Somehow, on a half-filled stomach, he could study in his village’s government school till STD 7. But his home needed him more than his classroom.
To add to his family income, he was forced to leave his studies midway and turn towards city. To provide at least two meals to his family members, he took up a job in a restaurant where his job was to clean leftovers from the tables after customers left.
While working in the restaurant, P Rajagopal learnt to prepare tea. He felt a little better about himself and switched to working at a grocery store. He was a keen observer and picked up an idea. He wanted to set up his own store but had no money to fuel his dream.
He turned to his father and elder brother for some support and took a leap. He opened his shop in KK Nagar of Chennai and gradually turned it into a tea stall. The business did well and money started seeping in day after day.
He did a survey of the nearby area and found out there was no decent place for people to eat and launched a restaurant named Sarvana Bhawan in the year 1979. To everyone’s surprise, P Rajagopal became the founder of one of the most popular restaurant chains in the world.
In those days, the restaurant culture had not made its way in the country which is why Rajagopal thought it was thought it could be a game-changer to venture into this area. In the initial years, he was very particular about the quality of food Sarvana Bhawan provided and that too at an affordable cost.
This intent incurred him a loss of Rs 10,000 every month but the approach had given him one edge. He became popular among the people of Chennai and had their trust.
Now Sarvana Bhawan is a brand in itself but many don’t know that it is also popular for taking good care of its employees. Rajagopal’s consistent approach has made him the founder of this chain restaurant which today has nearly 60 outlets around the world with a turnover running in crores of rupees.
Sylvester Stallone’s inspiring story is a great example of persistence and dedication that finally results in unimaginable success.
“Rocky isn’t based on me,” says Stallone, “but we both went the distance.” Sylvester Stallone’s inspiring story is a great example of persistence and dedication that finally results in unimaginable success.
Early Life
Not a lot of people know, but due to complications during labor, the lower left side of Stallone’s face is paralyzed, including parts of his tongue, lip and chin, an accident which has given Stallone his trademark snarling look and slightly slurred speech.
Stallone’s odd face made him an outcast in school, where he was often suspended for fighting, other behavior problems, and poor grades. His parents divorced when Sylvester was nine, and he was later sent to a special high school for “troubled kids,” where he was voted “most likely to end up in the electric chair”.
While he waited for his acting career to take off, Stallone worked all sorts of jobs to make ends meet. He cleaned up the lions’ cages at the Central Park Zoo, ushered at a movie theater, and even made an appearance in an adult film called A Party at Kitty and Studs (1970). In the actor’s words, “It was either do that movie or rob someone, because I was at the end – the very end – of my rope.”
He has also said that he slept three weeks in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City prior to seeing a casting notice for the film.
Journey to Success
Inspired by heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner, Stallone wrote the script for “Rocky” within 3 and 1/2 days. A few weeks after, Stallone was at a casting call for an acting part. He did not get the part, as usual, and as going out the door he mentioned that he had a script that he was working on. He asked if they’d be interested in taking a look. They consented.
Luckily, producers liked it and they offered him $25,000, unfortunately for Stallone, they didn’t want him to star. “They wanted every celebrated actor at the time, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, or Ryan O’Neal.”
From there, they sweetened the offer until they reached $360,000. He had $106 in the bank. His wife was pregnant, his bull mastiff was starving and he couldn’t pay the rent on his seedy Hollywood apartment but, Stallone turned down a $360,000 offer. He was determined to make the film he wrote on his terms, starring himself. “This is once of those things, where you just roll of the dice… I might be totally wrong but I have to do it… I just believe in it,” Stallone, commented.
In 1976 “Rocky” went on to receive 9 Oscar nominations – 3 wins including best picture. Stallone at the Oscar said: “Literally, I was parking cars 10 months earlier and now here we are.” The movie that was made for less than $1 million with hand held cameras brought in over $225 million.
Despite difficult beginning Sylvester Stallone is now one of the most popular Hollywood action stars of all time. He created two of the biggest movie franchises of all time (Rocky, John Rambo), wrote 24 scripts, generated nearly $4 billion for the studios and has an estimated net worth of $400 million. Stallone influenced modern popular culture through several of his iconic film characters. In 2016 he won a supporting actor Golden Globe for “Creed.”
10 Motivational Sylvester Stallone quotes:
1. “I believe there’s an inner power that makes winners or losers. And the winners are the ones who really listen to the truth of their hearts.”
2. “I am not the richest, smartest or most talented person in the world, but I succeed because I keep going and going and going.”
3. “When you’re scared, when you’re hanging on, when life is hurting you, then you’re going to see what you’re really made of.”
4. “I believe any success in life is made by going into an area with a blind, furious optimism.”
5. “I have great expectations for the future, because the past was highly overrated.”
6. “Every time I’ve failed, people had me out for the count, but I always come back.”
7. “Going on one more round, when you don’t think you can that’s what makes all the difference in your life.”
8. “Success is usually the culmination of controlling failure.”
9. “Every champion was once a contender that refused to give up.”
10. “It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
