How a young fellow began with Rs 6 lakh and constructed a Rs 10 crore turnover nibble brand with coarseness and assurance

At the point when Sudarshan Khungar's business endured misfortunes and the family fell into tough situations, little Manish Khungar was just around 11 years of age. "Our family carried on with a straightforward life and didn't live luxuriously, so the difficulty didn't influence our everyday living, except any enormous use turned into a reason for stress," reviews Manish, 40, the organizer behind Nagpur-based Royal Star Snacks that offers a scope of eatables including assortments of puff bites, pasta and prepared to-broil things.

When Sudarshan Khungar’s business suffered losses and the family fell into hard times, little Manish Khungar was just about 11 years old. “Our family lived a simple life and didn’t live extravagantly, so the setback didn’t affect our day-to-day living, but any big expenditure became a cause for worry,” recalls Manish, 40, founder of Nagpur-based Royal Star Snacks which offers a range of eatables including varieties of puff snacks, pasta, and ready-to-fry items.

How Manish rebuilt his family’s fortunes from scratch, starting an ear of corn sticks snacks business at 26 years with an investment of Rs 6 lakh soon after finishing his MBA from a college in Nagpur, and growing it into a Rs 10 crore turnover brand is an inspiring story of grit and determination. Being an only son, with my two elder sisters married off, I didn’t want to leave my parents behind and relocate to another city looking for a job,” says Manish, explaining his decision to remain in Nagpur.

Having decided not to take up a job, Manish looked for business opportunities and visited Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu in 2007 with the idea of gaining some knowledge in setting up a peanut chikki bar production unit. But when he saw wholesalers selling corn sticks in the city, he decided to set up a similar business in Nagpur. “I borrowed Rs 2.5 lakh from friends and family and took a bank loan of Rs 4.5 lakh and set up a 1,000 sq ft factory for making corn sticks,” says Manish, who targeted the local market initially.

His company, KB Foods, a proprietorship firm, registered a turnover of Rs 11 lakh in the first year. “I have traveled in local buses, stayed in cheap hotels just to save money in the initial years,” he says. But he incurred losses when he had to sell the machinery within 15 days of setting up the unit as the quality of the products was not good. We hit the first crore in turnover the year I got married.”

“She left her job after marriage, and now works with Royal Star Snacks taking care of the e-commerce vertical of the business,” he says. In April 2009, the same month and year he had got married, Manish launched ready-to-fry snacks. We also started exporting to the Middle East during this time,” says Manish.

Now, he says, they are focusing more on the domestic market and less on exports. “Our export accounts for just 5% of our business today,” he says. They added a new plant and started production of corn puffs, one of their popular snacks today. In 2017, they launched ready-to-fry 3D snacks and pasta.

Two years later, a few months before the announcement of the Covid lockdown, Manish started work on a new 12,000 sq ft facility and completed the work in August 2020. That’s when we ventured into ready-to-boil pasta,” he says. The type of the food product is always in bold letters on their packets – like Puff Snacks, Bhagar Puffs, Ragi Puffs, and so on. “The food item is the hero,” says Manish, explaining the logic.

“I want to introduce snacks made of healthy ingredients like jowar, ragi, and rice. Bringing healthy, roasted, or baked ready-to-eat snacks is my top priority now.” “I want to keep it affordable, in the range of Rs 10 for a small packet, where other brands sell a similar snack at three times the cost.”

Manish is having serious plans for expansion and says Venture Capitalists are ready to invest 1.5 million USD in the company, which he claims is valued at Rs 40 crore currently.

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