Mrs. Bector’s Cremica set to IPO this week: The story behind how a woman entrepreneur turned her kitchen-business into a ₹1,000 crore global empire

2) Rajni Bector is the founder and CEO of Mrs. Bector’s Cremica, a maker of biscuits and bread in India and a key supplier of McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King🍔

Rajni was born in Karachi, and had moved to Delhi with her family post partition

3) She married into a business family in Ludhiana while in college. Like most women then, most of her adult life was spent being a housewife and a doting mother💁‍♀️

However, when the kids left for school, she suddenly found a lot of free time on her hands

4) Out of boredom, she decided to take up her hobby of making ice cream

Rajni was a social person, gathering friends and family around her food for a nice time at home — now these gatherings doubled up as food tastings🥯

5) People loved her food so much that they started coming back to Rajni with catering orders for their functions!🤙

Rajni loved the new interest and purpose she had found

6) With plenty time on her hand, she decided to enroll in a formal baking class at the Punjab Agricultural University, studying the technicalities of baking🧁

Meanwhile, orders from catering wouldn’t stop.

The local-MLA even got her to cook food for a wedding with 2000 guests!

7) Rajni was fulfilling all orders from her home kitchen, which she had set up on a ₹300 budget.

She would end up selling below cost price, ruining tiny batches, and in the process incurring losses.

Commercializing the business was the only way it could work — if at all

9) 1980s India was a tumultuous time — Punjab was hit by violence

The Bector’s 100 year-old fertilizer business was destroyed. Economy of small towns like Ludhiana was ravaged

The Bector family decided it was time to team up and double up on what’s working — the food business.

10) The Bector’s opened their first ice cream retail joint next to Kwality’s — an instant hit in Ludhiana!!🍦

Using those profits they opened an operations facility in the town — finally moving out of the home kitchen.

The upstart became a legit company… 👏

11) Meanwhile, the family began taking an active role in the business, eyeing further expansion.

Cremica commissioned a biscuit plant in Ludhiana in 1991.

Big break came in 1995 — when McDonalds was expanding in India. Cremica became the sole supplier of buns and sauces🍅

12) By 2006, Cremica was cashing in ₹100 crores in revenues, with a 30% consistent growth rate📈

They were expanding across north-India, supplying to major chain restaurants

Dalal Street was taking notice and big bracket investors including Goldman invested in the business💸