The Burman who works

Amit Burman

Entrepreneurs do have an advantage over professionals, Dabur Foods CEO Amit Burman tells Bupesh Bhandari over salmon and pasta.

Amit Burman has often been described as the Burman who works. In the past few years, he has built from scratch the country's largest fruit juice brand, Real.

It has a sales turnover of Rs 110 crore and is on course to become the largest brand in the Dabur portfolio over the next three to four years overtaking the flagship product Dabur Chyawanprash. He has brought Audi to Delhi and runs an upmarket birthing boutique named Cradle in a tony neighbourhood of the city.

But he can't help being a Burman. Like his uncles and cousins, he is a regular face in the city's various party circuits. There is hardly a week when his innocent face doesn't stare back at you from Page Three.

A bourbon company once put him on a panel of connoisseurs to promote its brand. "He drinks nothing else," the partyhopping CEO of the company had told me. It was only later that I came to know that Burman doesn't touch the stuff. Clearly, his reputation as a party animal has outgrown him.

Burman owns a restaurant called Forum in south Delhi, which specialises in designer north Indian cuisine. I had proposed we meet there, hoping the chef would take extra care to delight the tastebuds of his malik and his guest.

But Burman insisted we meet at The Oberoi as it was closer to his office at Sahibabad in the outskirts of Delhi.

The Oberoi has several fine restaurants with a range that runs from Chinese to Thai, Indian, Japanese and Italian. After discussing the noise level at each restaurant, we decided on Travertino, the new Italian restaurant.

Blowing hi and hellos at numerous acquaintances, Burman began the short journey to the restaurant at the end of the lobby. Our assessment was right, only a handful of the tables were occupied. Not that the quiet of the place helped "" Burman speaks very softly and I had to frequently crane my neck to hear him.

Burman is the only member of his extended family who has an executive role in Dabur. (Dabur Foods is a 100 per cent subsidiary of Dabur India, the family flagship.) All others have moved out over the years, leaving it to professionals to run the company.

At the same time, any old hand in the company will also tell you that it was Burman's father, Gyan Chandra Burman, who built Dabur from a small Ayurveda company to an FMCG major.

He relocated from Kolkata to Delhi in the early 1970s (this is the reason why Burman can't speak a word of Bengali) to lead the charge.

But he died days before he was to replace his cousin, V C Burman, as the chairman in September 2001. (An authorised biography of the Burman family will soon reveal it all to the world.) Is there a connection, observers have often wondered.

I started quizzing him on his executive role in Dabur as soon as we had ordered our drinks, iced tea for Burman and Diet Coke for me. Frankly, I expected an evasive answer as family sensibilities were involved.

To my surprise, Burman gave a candid reply: "It is a new business for Dabur and if it has to grow at 35-40 per cent annually, you need an entrepreneur at the driving seat. No professional will take risks to grow beyond 10-15 per cent."

Over aubergine salad, Burman tells me how he incubated Dabur Foods and Real. When he returned to India in the mid-1990s after working for Colgate-Palmolive in the US for two years, Burman found that there was no branded fruit juice market in the country, though Indians loved it with juice stalls in every nook and cranny. He was first off the mark with Real.

But Mumbai-based Enkay stole a march over it with its brand Onjus (this is how a child would say orange juice, marketing folklore says).

Burman's product was rejected by the market. The retailers were returning the unsold juice in very large numbers. The projections made by Burman to his board went haywire.

The Dabur board even started contemplating shutting the business in order to cut losses. But Burman convinced the board to give him some more time. "This is where being an entrepreneur helped," he says.

He realised that the problem was in packaging. It required the juice to be boiled for a long period of time which not only changed its taste but also its colour. To fix the problem, Burman moved to Tetra Pak.

And there was no looking back for Real. Today, it has a market share of almost 60 per cent. Burman has a packaging unit in Nepal, which allows him to import world-class packaging at low duty and then ship it to India free of customs duty.

"Is the task over and would you retire from your executive role in the near future," I asked him. "Not yet," Burman said. "I want to grow it to a Rs 500 crore brand in the next three-four years."

The salad got over and the main course was served: grilled salmon for him and pasta for me. The helpings were small, which suited us fine "" both of us had a full day ahead. Moreover, a full stomach kills any appetite for arguments. "Aren't you a one brand wonder," I asked Burman.

"Not really," he replied, "We have other brands also "" like Hommade and Lemoneez that are growing very fast."

"Does any of these sell more than Rs 10 crore," I countered. Burman replied in the negative.

Burman's other businesses also look small in comparison to Real "" a restaurant in south Delhi, a Subway franchise in west Delhi, a birthing boutique and a solitary dealership for a high-end car brand. "What is the scalability in these businesses," I enquired.

Apart from the restaurant, which he called a one-off adventure he started with a few friends, Burman feels the other are fully scaleable.

According to him, the birthing boutique has been running full since it was launched a few months ago and he is planning to open a few more. For Audi, he is looking at another dealership in Punjab.

This, he said, will give him the springboard to sell more top-end automobiles in India. And Subway outlets, he said, he plans to launch them at petrol stations on highways.

"But is there a connection between these investments," I asked Burman as he was picking the last of the salmon on his plate. "These are investment in top-end luxury areas of the lifestyle market," Burman replied, adding, "Each is a niche area."

"What about the Internet businesses you had launched," I reminded Burman of some of his ventures that nobody talks of. When the dotcom boom was at its peak, he had launched three websites, including www.smartbahu.com, a site targeted at the young housewife.

The website, Burman said, has been shut down. Another one has been sold to Apollo (Burman continues to hold a minority stake in the company, while the third has been converted into a call centre, Azure, that employs some 50 people.)

The food was over and both of us declined to have dessert.

Burman ordered an espresso and I settled for a cappuccino. We now started discussing where the best lychees and mangoes are grown in India. Burman turned out to be fairly well informed about Ratnagiri Alphonsos and Saharanpur lychees.

As a parting shot, I asked Burman if his regular appearance on Page Three had impacted his image as a serious businessman.

"I have cut down on parties. I go out only on weekends, that too with close friends and small groups," he said.