Despite Shivaharan Arumugam’s initial shot at becoming an entrepreneur not falling in to place, the never-say-die, young man has taken on a small-scale business of health-friendly smoothie Elixir of Life.
This was a result of bringing out the burning-desire to tap the entrepreneur in him and to add that feature in his hat, in owning a start-up.
In a welcome move, Arumugam, 27, and his brainchild had gathered momentum and support through his fiancée, Charuni Maheshwara and his parents. The support of his girl was a healthy backing for the health product, as culinary art is her forte and prowess. “I saw the skill in her. I thought why waste it; let’s find a channel to make a business of it. She has the knack of making good food and I found a way to sell with zero capital,” he told Youth Observer.
“She is really good at making cakes. Couple of weeks, I was up. I was not expecting any sales day-01,”
His months old, new-business has turned out to be a win-win product, with answering and addressing his MBA coursework at the Postgraduate Institute of Management, Colombo.
Arumugam, an engineer by profession, has set his sights on transforming his business full-time. Elixir of Life is mainly ran by him and his girlfriend is a home-based kitchen and drinks are available on a leading online food ordering and delivery platform.
However, prior to this, for Arumugam it was far-off from a smooth sail. As any other businessperson, he had explored on other lines only to experience start up trouble and dropped off.
“First, we did cupcakes and solid food items. It was not working, because we had to predict the demand and planning on solid food items. But then, we realised it won’t work out,” Arumugam admitted.
They had ventured into beverages, now in to smoothies and want to establish in to custom made healthy food items on a customarily designed diet plan, their next big plan. This is in the discussion and developing stage and should get up-and-running, next year. “We have a tie up with dieticians to design meals, according to individual needs, which we give free-of-charge. If a person wants to design a meal plan, we give him/her a free consultation with our dietician who will design it free.” he said.
The meticulously prepared product priced at Rs. 440-550 will then be delivered to them. “We then realised with the raw material we could explore beverage. It is just a matter of blending the contents, putting into the container and delivering to the customer,” he said.
He had started and was getting some business.
Asked as to why he produces a run-on-the-mill health-based product, he revealed it was in a battle to combat obesity. “You can’t call it health-friendly and give so many calories and lack of nutrients. Should be rich in nutrients and low in calories,” he explained.
The duo endorses the sugar-free smoothie (only an option), targeted at professionals and students between the age of 20 and 40.
As this was a family-run-business, he said on a lighter note, he was caught in the cross - fire between his mother and girlfriend.“Entrepreneurship is fun,” he concluded.