Anil Mudumbi and his wife were faced with a problem. Having moved to London from India, how could they track down authentic Indian cooking ingredients in Britain?
The answer was to do it themselves. After a nine-year stint in consulting with IBM and Accenture — all the while writing down ideas for businesses on scraps of paper — Mr Mudumbi started iTadka, an internet business selling Indian groceries.
But, sadly, making it in business is not as easy as that — and going it alone can be especially tough, as Mr Mudumbi quickly discovered. He launched his venture in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, and, but for one key factor, he is convinced that it would have failed.
Step forward Dynshaw Italia, the eBookers entrepreneur and former chief financial officer at Cobra Beer — Mr Mudumbi’s mentor. “If it wasn’t for Dynshaw, I’d have shut up shop a long time ago,” he says.
“We applied to the bank for a really crucial loan and the application was turned down. I said: ‘That’s it — we’re finished.’ But Dynshaw looked at the business plan and said: ‘Think what you need to do to make sure the company survives an extra month.’ ”
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Often the greatest challenge for a new entrepreneur is how to handle the many demands of business — marketing, finance, operations. In a big company, entire departments take care of marketing and Mr Mudumbi faced huge gaps in his knowledge. “Dynshaw brought that experience. He acted as my sounding board.”
Indian suppliers operate “in a different universe” to an internet business in the UK, Mr Mudumbi says, but persistence appears to be paying off and iTadka now has the backing of Dabur, a consumer goods group that is one of the largest companies in India.
For Mr Mudumbi, the most valuable aspect of working with a mentor was being asked probing questions. “If I said we’d had success handing out fliers outside Tube stations, Dynshaw would ask: ‘Which station?’ His belief is that if you don’t know what is making you succeed, you can’t replicate it.”
ITadka has 2,500 regular customers and Mr Mudumbi hopes to expand the business by 300 per cent this year. Moreover, despite the rocky start, he argues that starting up in a recession was crucial to the success of his business: “Being refused that loan was the best thing that could have happened. The discipline a recession instils in you is very important.”
Mr Italia became a mentor after several years as a member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a global body that, in the UK, arranges mentoring partnerships: “I felt I could bring my experience — what worked, what didn’t, the pitfalls I had encountered.”
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Before each meeting with Mr Mudumbi he would order something from the iTadka website. “I’d say to Anil: ‘Your delivery was amazing but this didn’t work for me.’ ” Entrepreneurs are often optimists by nature and can underestimate the problems involved in taking a business from start-up to stability. This is one area where a mentor can help, Mr Italia says. “I’d ask: ‘When are you going to run out of cash? Are you thinking about it?’ ” He also persuaded Mr Mudumbi to commit to his idea by working for the business full-time.
The UK branch of TiE was set up by Nish Kotecha, a former investment banker, with Tom Singh, the founder of New Look, the high-street fashion retailer. Mr Kotecha says that British entrepreneurs can often be reluctant to network: “Put American entrepreneurs in a room together and they will immediately start talking to each other, swapping business cards. [In the UK] I’ve been at events where people turn up, listen to the speakers and then leave.”
The British network celebrates its tenth birthday this year and has 1,000 members. Not everyone who applies to the mentoring programme — which began in 2006 — is accepted. As Mr Kotecha explains: “People come to us and say: ‘I want to make money. Can I have a mentor?’ That’s not what we’re here for.”
The British Library began working with TiE last year, prompted by the growing number of entrepreneurs passing through its doors to look up intellectual property rights and carry out market research. Largely because of rising unemployment, 70,000 people used the library’s services last year, compared with the usual 35,000.
Gabrielle Rose, the business engagement manager at the British Library Business & IP Centre, said: “A lot more people are now self-employed. We try to support them from the initial spark of inspiration, then in the starting phase, through to fertilisation.
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“Once businesses get to growth stage, they need further support. People were really benefiting from high-level expertise and mentoring.”
Although TiE is open to all entrepreneurs, it retains the influence of its Asian roots, Mr Kotecha says: “[In Asian] businesses, experience is handed down from father to son, one generation to the next. People prioritise practical experience over educational development. We’ve taken that philosophy on in our mentoring.”
Mr Mudumbi still meets Mr Italia regularly and says that the arrangement has helped his business and his career. “Eventually, I want to start other businesses,” he says. The only casualty of entrepreneurial success, it seems, has been his cooking. “I don’t have time for that any more.”