Entrepreneurship is often romanticized as a journey of overnight success, but the reality is very different. Behind every successful business lies years of uncertainty, failures, sacrifices, and relentless perseverance. In an insightful conversation with Gujpreneur, Prakash Kathiria (Director, Yogi Care Pharma. Deep Mamra and Akshar International Pvt. Ltd.) opened up about his journey from Gondal, a small town in Gujarat, to building businesses that operate across global markets.
A Small-Town Beginning with Big Dreams
Prakash Kathiria grew up in Gondal, a region with several types of businesses, including traditional ones. Both his grandfather and father were entrepreneurs, and he witnessed firsthand how businesses were built during his childhood. Even when many people around him referred to him as “Nana Seth”, he wanted to build something on his own, to make his own decisions, and to build a company that had his own vision for it. His desire to build something completely independent from a family business was a result of his first visit to Ahmedabad. He came from a small town and saw that Ahmedabad offered him a chance to become extremely successful and grow a company larger than he had seen before.
Learning Business from the Ground Up
Prakash Kathiria began a puffed rice manufacturing business in 2003. Operating a manufacturing business taught him all the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, including production processes, purchasing, quality control, finance, sales, marketing, operations, logistics, and customer service. Every business challenge became a classroom. One of the greatest lessons he learned from this time period was that operating a family business does not eliminate difficulties, but rather introduces a completely different set of difficulties. The puffed rice company is still operational today and produces approximately 10 tons of product each day for markets in Gujarat, Karnataka and Hyderabad.
Embracing Risk as a Way of Life
If you ask most entrepreneurs what is the greatest risk they’ve ever taken, they will undoubtedly identify one defining moment where everything came together for good or bad but this is not true for Prakash Kathiria. His perspective on risk is very different than most entrepreneurs, he considers business a series of continuous risks. Over the course of his own personal journey through business, he faced many obstacles including shipments being rejected, fraud, financial loss, disruption due to downturns in the economy, and operations challenges. Instead of viewing these experiences as failures, he chose to see them as learning opportunities.
The Turning Point: Exploring Global Markets
When he first went to Kenya, he was unsure about what to sell and how he would start his business there. After several months spent trying new products and building relationships in the Kenyan marketplace, he realized export isn’t just another business; it is a marketplace. The core principles of doing business remain the same whether in the domestic or international market: understanding the consumer, being able to provide value, managing risk and creating trust. This understanding eventually led Prakash Kathiria to expand his entrepreneurial journey beyond FMCG. In 2014, he founded Akshar International Pvt. Ltd., a company focused on exports in the electrical and engineering sectors.
The Power of Mentorship in Entrepreneurship
The concept of mentoring has been a theme throughout his business journey. Coming from Gondal, he often found it difficult to find experienced mentors in business at the beginning of his career. But he continued to seek out guidance from people who had already walked the path he was trying to follow. He has a very strong belief that every entrepreneur should have a mentor, guide or guru.
According to Prakash Kathiria, business can be broken down into three simple steps: establish relationships first, then build trust, and finally establish a business.
From Trading to Healthcare: Entering the Pharmaceutical Industry
After moving to Ahmedabad, he entered a new and exciting phase in his life that started with networking and researching the pharmaceutical industry. He had previously faced challenges in transitioning from one industry, so he was apprehensive about making this transition to another completely different industry (pharmaceuticals).
Although he always intended to enter manufacturing, he took time to understand the regulations, registrations, and compliance requirements involved in the pharmaceutical industry. He began with trading and focused on developing the market before expanding further. The experience and insights gained during this phase ultimately led to the founding of Yogi Care Pharmaceutical in 2021, a company established with the vision of delivering high-quality pharmaceutical products to international markets and building a strong global healthcare brand from India.
Quick Decisions, Long-Term Patience
Prakash Kathiria has provided some incredibly practical advice for new entrepreneurs, specifically when it comes to making decisions. He believes that quick decision making is a key factor in becoming successful as an entrepreneur. Many people tend to wait because they’re afraid of making the “wrong” choice but, as Kathiria points out, even some of the most successful entrepreneurs have made “wrong” decisions. Indecision is the problem; failure isn’t. He believes while you should always make decisions quickly, it takes time for those decisions to result in something positive. The majority of businesses take years to establish themselves. It can take time for a market to fully understand your business; it can take time for customers to trust your business; and rarely does a business have overnight success.
Why Do Gujaratis Thrive in Business?
According to Prakash Kathiria this unique business culture in Gujarat is one significant factor that has helped to foster future entrepreneurial success. Children in Gujarat have business conversations at home growing up; they hear their parents discussing what product/service to sell, how much to charge for it, what type of negotiating techniques to use and all of the different ways that a person can identify new business prospects.
The Future Vision: Going Deeper, Not Wider
Although many entrepreneurs are pursuing multiple opportunities for growth within their business, Prakash Kathiria is taking a much different approach as he looks towards the future. Rather than attempting to enter into 20 different and unrelated industries, he is looking to develop more extensively in one sector – the pharmaceutical industry.
Over the next 10 years, he plans to establish a presence in at least 30 countries and to strengthen Yogi Care Pharmaceuticals’ footprint around the globe. This is an important lesson for young entrepreneurs – Too often we succeed due to having a high degree of focus rather than being distracted by many competing opportunities.
Lifelong Learning and the Importance of Personal Growth
Prakash Kathiria has spent many years running a business but still acts like it’s been a long time for him and he still sees life as an opportunity to learn. He believes that when someone feels they’ve learned everything there is to know, the individual will stop growing. He also places more emphasis on fitness, health and personal development and firmly believes as our responsibilities continue to change entrepreneurially, we must take care of ourselves first if we wish to contribute positively to the greater good of society.
Explore Gujprenuer for more such insightful conversations.
