“Twenty years ago, when there were no cellphones and passport offices were inconvenient to reach, I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: an offer letter and plane tickets to London for a job I couldn’t refuse, but I had only three days to secure a visa”. Pravesh Pandey, a business mogul, Food and Beverage leader, and owner of Bangalore’s largest craft house, Roxie, says, “I am happy I was able to sail through my struggle then and I am happier where that he led me now” to The Style.World
Pravesh got his start in the hospitality business as a barman. Being in a pub used to be a different game back then, he says. He has a passion for communicating with people and a wealth of fascinating stories to share with his guests. He moved from his hometown of Varanasi to seek employment in the larger cities of Bombay, Kolkata, and Delhi. Pravesh is a man full of life and excitement, having had the opportunity to work on a cruise ship, traversing the world for three years on work, and then returning to India to work at well-known restaurants like Shiro, Hard Rock Café, Smoke House Delhi, and travelling south to serve as COO for brands like Byg Brewsky.
To better grasp his life’s ultimate significance, he infused his job with CSR initiatives. He learned his true calling from a monk in the Himalayas: “Learn, Earn, and Return.” He feels a personal, rather than a business, need to give back to the F&B industry, which he has studied extensively and which employs him the most. Which brings him back to the period of covid, when there were summers but a pandemic had struck and people went hungry. The uproar that ensued when a commoner came in his automobile and seen people fighting over ration packages made him know he had to take action in order to return to the community and address a practical issue of the world.
Offering affordable meals for the blue-collar workforce (often costing between 25 and 30Rs), Bisi Bisi Oota was his initiative to provide free breakfast and lunch to individuals living in slums, rural regions, and on the roadways. He opened seven more stores when the response was so great. When the non-governmental organisation Pragati got behind his idea, it allowed him to create a more inclusive environment in which people from all walks of life—from autistic children to adults with autism—could participate in the preparation of food. He employed autistic adults to wash vegetables, adult women to run the kitchen, and adults to serve as front-of-house staff. These days, those ladies run their own businesses while still raising families and providing for their communities.
The goal of Pravesh Pandey is to equip people from outlying regions with marketable skills and assist them launch successful professional careers. His second project, Releski (get REcruited by LEarning the SKI-lls you need), used an app to teach seven or eight distinct regional languages. Thanks to swiggy, he was able to network with over 80,000 restaurants and provide training for their employees. He’s glad he did it and hopes to keep doing bold actions like that in the future.
Pravesh’s intrest of the technology industry and his ability to combine food and technology led to his joining at Zomato before he started his own restaurant . He realized the other side of the food industry and became a better entrepreneur after seeing how people may order any kind of cuisine from the comfort of their own homes using only an app. But he also knows that it’s important to strike a good balance between the two, since humans are irreplaceable and technology can’t replicate a restaurant’s ambiance, while technology is essential for streamlining processes in key financial areas.
The entrepreneurial Pravesh admits, “If there’s one lover I haven’t slept with, it’s food.” At age 9, he began to show an interest in cooking for his family and friends, and he has enjoyed preparing a wide variety of dishes ever since. Though he was raised in a vegetarian household, he had always been curious about meat and fish dishes. His interest in cuisine and the skills he gained in his Hotel Management school have given him the freedom to try dishes from all around the world. Pravesh’s passion is in the kitchen, where he can best utilise his skills to satisfy the palates of his patrons. He like the part of the job when he gets to sit with the chef and try the cuisine before it is served to the guests.
After 15 years in the industry, Pravesh decided to go out on his own. The help of Roxie has allowed him to move his ideas forward. He’d rather accomplish something meaningful and memorable that will make others happy than just fill time. Even as he plans to open new locations around the country for his restaurants, he is also working to make his business an attractive option for potential investors. Through his business, Roxie, he makes an effort to personally meet each and every customer that goes through the door. His goal is to provide a good networking space for clients with the use of Less Network.
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Today’s entrepreneurs at need easy scalability and rapid returns. Pravesh is devoted to the training and advancement of entry-level workers in order to better assist them in establishing themselves in the workforce. Young business owners, in his opinion, would do best to invest in their team members and find ways to bring them closer together so that they can work together to expand the company, said Mr. Pravesh at The Style Talk
Authored by : Shrishti Jaiswal
