Goli Vada Pav on major expansion drive, to add 100 stores this year

Goli Vada Pav eyes opening 5,000 stores in the next five years, the largest expansion ever for a fast food chain in the country. “We plan to open 100-125 stores and clock ₹70 crore this fiscal, and are targeting a market opportunity of 5,000 stores by 2020,” said co-founder and CEO, Venkatesh Iyer.

“We are building the business with the enquiries we are receiving from around the country and abroad. For instance, our Porbandar store in Gujarat, which opened nine months ago, is run by a London-based franchisee,” Iyer said.

After consolidating its position in Karnataka with 110 stores, the Mumbai-based fast food chain is on expansion mode in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Three of the 10 new stores opened in the four southern markets over the last few months were in Kerala — at Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram and Palakkad. The company has signed up a master franchise for Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry and plans to open 200 new stores by 2020 in these two markets.

Founded by Iyer and Shivdas Menon in 2004, Goli Vada Pav has established a pan-India footprint with 350 stores in 19 States across 88 cities and closed financial year 2015 with revenues of ₹55 crore. The store sized is typically 150-200 sq ft and costs ₹10-12 lakh to set up.

Aggressive expansion To support its expansion plans, Goli has doubled its team size from 75 people a year ago to 150 at present, including senior talent with experience in marquee FMCG and QSR companies in sales, operations and business development roles.

In addition to the franchisee model, the company has put in place an operating franchisee model as well, in order to expand faster. “Many of our franchisees want to invest in Goli stores but do not have the time to run it so, we help them by identifying and training operating franchisees who will take on the day-to-day operations for our investor franchisees. This model has helped us expand faster and our market ranking in terms of the number of stores in India places us at fourth position after Domino’s, Subway and McDonald’s” said Iyer. Goli is expanding rapidly in Tier 2 cities pan-India and opened new stores in Bhilwara, Bhubaneshwar, Faridabad, Dalhousie, Dhanbad, Ludhiana, Mohali, Pali, Agra, Shimoga, Gorakhpur, Jodhpur and Bhusawal over the last six months.

The company has raised ₹26 crore in two rounds of funding, and is backed by Ventureast which invested ₹21 crore in Goli in 2011.

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