To do something substantial, take different paths and risks: 40u40 2024 Ankush Grover

Building a company has a lot of ups and downs but one needs to keep learning and becoming better, says Ankush Grover, co-founder and CEO, India, Rebel Foods. Grover featured in the 2024 edition of Fortune India 40 Under 40 list.

“A lot of us in India think there is a definite path of doing engineering and MBA. A definite path will always have definite return. So if you want to do something substantial, you have to take different paths and risks,” says Grover, adding that there is no right time to do things.

Grover says the turning point of his career was in 2012 when Jaydeep Barman was looking for a resident entrepreneur. “It’s the time when the startup industry was just starting in India and everything was very new. So that’s the turning point when I joined as one of the fellow co-founders and we built Rebel Foods in the last decade,” he says. “There’s a long way for us to go. It’s just a start.”

One of the biggest challenges Grover faced was high rentals on high streets. “In 2013-24, when we were starting with Faasos, we did a survey and found that 75% of our customers have never seen our outlets. That’s when we realised that why should we pay high rentals on high street because rent is a big cost for food business. That’s the time when we started this thing called cloud kitchens and dark kitchens,” he says.

Grover admires business leaders like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Ratan Tata.